


all that's left in the world—

by izabellwit



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Angst and Feels, Banter, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Development, Developing Friendships, Epic Friendship, Eventual Happy Ending, Final Remix Spoilers, Forgiveness, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Minor Eri/Shiki Misaki, Minor Kiryu "Joshua" Yoshiya/Sakuraba Neku, Near Death Experiences, Post-Canon, a la reaper's game, tho for them its less ship and more "its complicated" in all caps
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:53:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 40,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25553131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izabellwit/pseuds/izabellwit
Summary: —is me.Neku's been shot and Shibuya is threatening to go the same way as Shinjuku, but just because the first Game is over doesn't mean they've forgotten how to play.Or: Neku deals with a nightmare city and his most annoying (and mathematical) partner yet; Shiki and Joshua commit an escalating number of illegal moves; Beat and Eri hunt down a stray Reaper, and Rhyme watches and waits for the counter-attack. Shibuya refuses to go down easy.
Relationships: Bito "Beat" Daisukenojo & Bito "Rhyme" Raimu, Bito "Beat" Daisukenojo & Sakuraba Neku, Eri & Bito "Beat" Daisukenojo, Eri/Misaki Shiki, Kiryu "Joshua" Yoshiya & Misaki Shiki, Kiryu "Joshua" Yoshiya & Sakuraba Neku, Minamimoto Sho & Sakuraba Neku, Misaki Shiki & Sakuraba Neku
Comments: 121
Kudos: 94





	1. neku

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got the game a month ago and finished it like a week ago and basically... TWEWY has my whole heart, okay.
> 
> Two things: This IS based off _A New Day_ , especially the end. It was confusing as heck but also a great sequel hook, so I couldn't pass up the chance. If TWEWY won't give us a sequel then I'll write my own, dammit. Second, I played this on the switch version, so most of the battle scenes will be based on that, as I'm completely unfamiliar with the original mechanics. Please be kind to me. I don't know what the "light puck" is and I'm too afraid to ask.
> 
>  **Warnings** : character death (a la Coco and Reapers' Game), Neku being in a very bad headspace, and some cursing. I think that's all for this one, but if there's anything I missed, let me know and I'll add it on here!
> 
> I hope you guys enjoy!

**_Hey… is anybody there?_ **

**_Someone… anyone…_ **

**_Please._ **

_._

_._

_._

Neku wakes up in the middle of a crosswalk.

For a moment he is mute, is still, frozen on the road and just staring at the sky, fingers digging so hard into the gravel of the street he’s starting to tear up his fingertips. Neku hardly notices. He’s here _again._ Again. All that fighting and all those weeks of trying to move on and— and here he is. Back again. Right where he started.

He takes a breath and pushes his hands against his eyes, because if he doesn’t he really does think he’s just going to break down into hysterical tears right then and there, and thinks: _At least it wasn’t Joshua who shot me this time._

Small mercies. The Joshua-with-a-gun vision had apparently been Joshua trying to help him (???) or save him, or something. Instead Neku had—literally, this time—been shot in the back by the cotton-candy-colored Reaper with the cutesy speech and yeah, in hindsight, he really should have seen that coming. Go fucking figure.

Beat saw him die, Neku thinks next, and then: oh, man, Beat is going to _freak._

His phone buzzes in his pocket ( _fuck off,_ Neku thinks, _I'm having a moment here, go the hell away,)_ and the sharp pain of the timer searing itself on his palm is as familiar as breathing. Neku breathes into his hands until the urge to scream is gone, and then he shoves himself to his feet and runs his fingers back through his hair, missing his headphones like an ache. No time for breakdowns, no time for the crisis looming up behind his eyes. Time’s ticking. The Game’s begun. Neku has to move.

_Shiki is going to be so upset._

No, no, no time to think about it. Neku tugs once, hard, at his hair, and then he looks up and prepares to make for Hachiko.

His brain stutters to a stop. Neku stares. He’s… this is… this isn’t Scramble Crossing.

This isn’t Shibuya. 

Actually, Neku thinks, breathing starting to pick up a little, is this—is this even a city? It looks like one, in theory—except somewhere in making the city someone forgot to fill in the blanks, so to speak. There are no people, no cars, not even a single ad broadcasted on those strange, empty white buildings; the screens are filled with nothing but static.

Neku takes a step back. There’s no one else around. He has no idea where he is. But that buzz of a phone in his pocket—the burn of the timer in his hand—if he needed any proof that he's back in the UG, lo, there it is. 

Neku reaches up and grips at his hair, pulling hard. It’s a bad habit that for once is sorely needed, and the brief ache of pain is almost enough to ground him. His hands are shaking.

“Fuck,” Neku says, lowly. “Oh, fuck this,” and then he yanks his hands away, back to his side, and turns to run.

Midday on the Monday, and yet, this strange not-city is completely empty. Where are the crowds, the cars, that constant hum of noise in the air? Where’s the battlefield? It feels almost like an insult—finally, Neku has gotten used to it, has learned to love that whisper of sound and music in the air, the murmur of a living city… and now it’s gone, dead silent, so quiet it makes him feel like his ears are bleeding. He hates it. He _hates_ it. This isn’t Shibuya. Where is this?

Neku rounds the corner in a straight sprint, and then skids to a stop, hissing through his teeth. Oh, shit. Noise.

But—god, Neku thinks, really starting to panic now, because the _Noise are wrong._ They’re supposed to be symbols in the air, burning like a brand against the backdrop; the monsters crawl through only if you get too close. But these Noise have already manifested. Fully formed, no symbols at all, and that… that’s not right, Neku thinks. Nothing about this is right.

No time to panic. Neku catches his breath and rocks on his heels, backing away from the Noise. They’re drawing close—they’ve noticed him—and Neku backpedals, faster now, looking around—people, he thinks, other Players, hello, where are you?

But no one’s getting eaten, as far as he can see; no one's running or looking panicked or—there’s no one out here but him, and he remembers _this game only has one player_ and no, fuck, no. Not happening. Not _again_.

“Hey!" Neku shouts, and his voice doesn’t even echo, swallowed whole by the complete emptiness surrounding him. The fear sparks. " _HEY_! Is anyone else—any Player, come on, answer me! Someone answer me! Is anyone—?"

**_Hey… is anyone there?_ **

Neku stops mid-word, almost coughing on it; his vision grays, and he stumbles. _What…?_

**_Someone… anyone—_ **

There’s static in his ears. He can’t breathe. He presses his hands against his head and—

“ _So_ zetta slow,” a new voice snaps, and Neku drops to his knees, stunned, the static gone and his head feeling oddly empty. There’s an ache in his chest like someone took a knife to his heart. “Took you forever to get here.”

Someone’s walking up to him. Leather boots. In hindsight, a _really_ familiar voice. Neku grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut, and abruptly takes back his wish about someone answering him. One player game is fine, actually. Silence is fine. This is fine.

“Get up, you factoring hectopascal,” Sho Minamimoto says, with a smile settled wide and wild on his face. “The longer you stay on the floor, the harder it gets to reach my desired solution.”

Neku stands very slowly, his hands strangling to fists. “I thought you got crunched.”

And yeah, there’s no mistaking it: it’s the Grim Heaper, in the flesh, the guy Joshua once described as a math fetishist to his face, a description Neku had very tellingly _not_ disagreed with. Hatless, because Neku took that sucker off this man's dead body without an inch of regret, given _everything_ , but still the same as ever. Taboo-tattooed, open-shirted, smug. 

Or no—not so smug. At the comment he almost seems to twitch; his eyes narrow. “I miscalculated,” he admits, sounding a little grudging. “Unforeseen factors, and now someone new is punching in the equations; you and I are just constants.” He looks away, grimacing, reaching up as if to tug at his hat; he makes a face when he doesn’t find it, and Neku resists the urge to smirk. Petty, maybe. But so, so deserved. “No say in how we get used. Undesired solutions all around.”

Neku has forgotten how much of a headache this guy is. He’s remembering really quickly. “What?” No, it doesn't matter. He casts a glance around—still no apparent Players and god, okay, _fine._

Neku slides back into a stance. He doesn't know what pins he has on him; he never thought to check. He has no partner. Taking on Pi-Face with his bare hands is stupid, but the Noise are everywhere and Neku, on sheer principle, refuses to go down without a fight. 

_Sorry, Shiki. Sorry, Beat._ “I don’t know what you’re on about and I don’t care,” Neku says, shortly. “I’m not—”

“ _Zetta slow,”_ Minamimoto snaps again, and Neku resists the urge to punch him in the face just for that. “Haven’t you noticed already? Get with the program!”

“What are you—” Neku starts, and then he _feels_ static crackle at his back, and freezes. The Noise. He forgot about—

There’s no time to run. The Noise slam into him from behind; Neku catches himself in a roll and rises back to his feet, hands shaking. What _is_ this? Pi-Face is here, and the Noise… as ironic as it sounds, they’d made _no sound._ He hadn’t even noticed them coming. And where is the Noise pocket? He can still see Minamimoto. Is this because he isn’t in a pact yet? But—

The Noise lunge at him. Neku’s thoughts white out. He reaches for his pocket before he can think better of it, and his hands close around his pins on instinct.

It’s like grabbing hold of the sun.

It’s a rush of power so sudden it almost dizzies him. Strength crackles through his fingers, lightning singing through his veins, and the Noise are dust within moments, Neku blinking in the afterglow. There’s no victory to it, though. No glee. He feels ill. There’s a sinking feeling in his gut, a building realization—because Sho Minamimoto is alive and Joshua tried to save him and Neku is starting to suspect this isn’t a true Game at all. This is something a lot worse.

He takes a deep breath and pries his hand away from his pins, his heart in his throat, anger turned ashy on his tongue. And he looks at the city around him, really _looks._ And he thinks of those visions he had. Of that city, turning to dust.

He curls his hands to fists and tries to breathe, because that isn’t the only thing. Because now that he’s thought to look for it, he’s found it. Because it’s there, again, ignored only because of the panic—the sense of someone else, an awareness of them, as though he could close his eyes and still know exactly where they are. 

A pact.

He turns back around. Minamimoto meets his eyes, and juts up his chin with a smile edged murderous and grim. “Get it yet, yoctogram? FOIL! _We_ aren't the ones crunching numbers this time.”

No, Neku thinks. They’re not. This isn’t the Game he knows. This isn’t anything like he knows.

Neku takes a deep breath. He squeezes his eyes shut and opens them again. And this time, finally, he takes out his phone, and looks at the mission mail proper, the lone text scrawled out in cutesy font and casual text-talk. 

> _Kill the Composer of Shibuya. You have, like, 7 days._
> 
> _Fail, and face total and complete erasure._
> 
> _Good luck!!!_
> 
> _-Coco <3_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coco is so fun to write. Murderous and cute. A+ villain. Sho Minamimoto, on the other hand... fun to watch!! But I despise math and also haven't taken math in two years and oh my god he's going to drive me to tears. Help me. Help.
> 
> (Neku, in general, just deserves better than this. He has terrible luck but great friends, however, so perhaps it evens out...?)
> 
> Next up: Shiki! 
> 
> [If you wanna rec this fic, you can reblog it here!!](https://izaswritings.tumblr.com/post/624815172898504704/all-thats-left-in-the-world-chapter-one) Also, if you have any questions or just want to talk, [my tumblr](http://izaswritings.tumblr.com) is always open!!
> 
> Any thoughts?


	2. shiki

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiki gets a terrible phone call, and plans a break-in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to chapter two!!! The response to chapter one was _so kind,_ oh my gosh. Thank you all so much! I’m really glad you guys enjoyed this story so far, and trust me when I say I have a lot more in store!
> 
> Fun fact: I recently replayed TWEWY with my best friend this weekend. I died all over again. The animation is going to break me into tiny, tiny pieces.
> 
>  **Warnings:** some cursing, implied/referenced character death a la Neku’s situation/Reaper’s game, references to canonical murder attempts (successful and failed), implied suicide mentions (nothing explicit, just… as a way to get into the Game), self-esteem issues abound, and Joshua. Just… Joshua.
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

She knows even before she gets the call, Beat inconsolable over the phone. She knows, in some way, from the moment she wakes up, that very morning. Mr. Mew’s stitching is ripped and Neku is late for their meeting; she and Eri go shopping alone. It’s not the first time it has happened, and Eri is fine, even more upbeat than usual when she hears it’s just them today—but Shiki, for a moment there at Ten-Four, stands looking in a shop window feeling like the floor has fallen out beneath her feet, like everything has tilted to just that one degree left to _off_ and now no matter what she tries, it’s never going to be the same again.

So, yeah. She knows. She picks up the phone for the second time this morning with her fingers already going numb, her gut all tied up in knots, Mr. Mew strangled in her other hand. She answers the phone. 

She says, “Beat, I— I don’t understand, I’m sorry, what happened? Beat, what happened? Where’s Neku? I just talked to him, I was just talking to him—is he with you? Beat?”

She listens. “Beat, where are you?”

She doesn’t move. She feels like she’s barely breathing. She talks into the phone, and she can’t even hear her own voice, the roaring in her ears is so loud.

Minutes later. Shiki hangs up the phone. She closes her eyes.

There’s a beat. Ten-Four is aflutter around her; the murmuring crowd and the click of shoes against the ground and the way the light warps and reflects, bouncing off the glass, twisting around each shadow. It’s midday on a Monday and Shibuya is awake and alive, and Shiki feels like a stranger.

Eri says, “Shiki?”

Shiki blinks. She swallows. She’s still holding the phone, she realizes, and it takes effort to click it closed, to put it away. Her hands are cold.

Eri’s standing in front of her, eyes wide. They’re in the middle of the walkway, the crowd rushing around them. She has shopping bags in one hand and a smile that’s fallen to worry. “Shiki! What’s wrong? Was that Neku?”

Shiki flinches, and then curls her hand. “N-no,” she says. She takes a breath. Then another. Something settles in her. “No, no, it was— Eri, um, I’m sorry, I have to go.”

“What? But—”

“Sorry. Sorry. I just— I have somewhere I need to be,” Shiki says, and she says this last bit very quietly, decided and cold to her core, a whisper to herself. “Eri— Eri, can I ask a favor?”

Eri has already put down her bags. She looks freaked. “Of course, Shiki, anything, but what—”

“My friend, Beat— h-he saw— he needs some help right now. He’s by the CAT mural in Udagawa. Can you go help him get home? Beat’s calling Rhyme, and I’m sure they’ll get him back safe but— I'd feel a lot better if you could help too.”

“Sure,” Eri whispers. They’re in their own little bubble in the crowd, and Eri has come close, shopping bags left on the floor and her bare hands taking Shiki’s wrists. “Sure, of course, whatever it is but—Shiki, what happened? Where are _you_ going?"

Shiki stares down at the floor. She doesn’t answer, doesn’t know _how_ to answer, and in the end she just stays silent. She tugs her wrists from Eri’s grip, and turns to pick up Mr. Mew with both hands, looking down at his face. There’s comfort in this—the stitching she knows by heart, that she did by hand; the reminder of the power, and the life she once breathed into him. Her hands tighten. Her fingers leave little dimples in his black fur. Because Mr. Mew is answer enough, isn't it? She feels so cold, but she isn't surprised, not really. She woke up this morning feeling like the world was off-kilter, and even though she hadn’t needed Mr. Mew with her for weeks, she'd brought him with her today.

“Shiki?”

Her eyes feel hot and wet. She presses her lips. “Eri,” she says. “Please just trust me. I—I have to—I have somewhere I need to go.”

Eri looks panicked. Her hands flutter by Shiki's shoulders. She laughs, bubbly and bright and all Eri, but it wavers at the edges. “I—”

Shiki meets her gaze. “Please,” she repeats. Her grip on Mr. Mew is very tight. “He’s by the CAT mural. He’s… he’s not doing okay.”

Eri bites her lip hard. “Okay,” she whispers. She swallows and looks around and makes as if to pick up her shopping bags, almost, before she seems to think better of it and pulls her hand back, fluttering in the air. “Okay, okay. I will.” She searches Shiki’s face. “You better call me, okay? Shiki, promise you’ll call me.”

If this goes right, Shiki won’t be able to call her. Shiki won’t be able to call anyone. But she can’t say that. Eri doesn’t know—not about the Game, not about anything. Even if she did, she still wouldn’t let Shiki go.

And Shiki has to do this.

Shiki exhales. “Okay.”

Eri’s face falls. She’s always known when Shiki lied to her. She reaches out and Shiki steps back. “Thanks, Eri,” Shiki says, voice tight, and then she turns on her heel and runs for it before she can think better of what she is about to do.

.

Neku told them all the whole story, in the end; Neku tells them everything. The missing gaps and the hollow pieces and who that pale-haired boy had really been, down there in the Shibuya River, on that final day. He told them, even though he wasn’t supposed to, and at the time Shiki had nodded and listened and tried not to feel sick, and she'd said all the things that needed to be said, like “Why do you still trust him?” and “Okay, Neku, but—” and “Even so. If—if he ever—you know I always have your back, right?”

And Neku had smiled at her. “I know,” he'd said. 

But Shiki had taken something else from that truth too, in a way Beat and even Rhyme had not: she had understood. She understands what it’s like. Once, not as long ago as either of them would like, Neku had lifted Shiki into the air and strangled her with her own shirt collar. He tried to kill her. And afterward he said sorry like it had to be pulled out from between his teeth, and Shiki had accepted that because Shiki accepted everything back then, especially terrible things, because Shiki had known she was an awful person and so bad things in return were just deserved. 

Neku hadn’t really been sorry then; in her secret heart of hearts, Shiki hadn’t really forgiven him, either. She would, though. At the end of the sixth day, five minutes before the ad was set to air and they were waiting with bated breath to know the outcome, Shiki had apologized for slowing them down—and Neku, Neku had looked away and said, awkward and quiet and like he didn’t know the right way to be kind: “That's okay. It’s fine. We, um. We all have our bad days.”

She’d looked at him, then. She thought about everything he’d said to her, how she’d bared all her ugly secrets and he’d accepted it like it was fine. How he’d told her she was lucky to be jealous—to have something to strive for—to have a friend so wonderful you could be jealous of them—and how those words had sunk in where everything else had slipped off. The envy ate at her, sometimes, like a rot in her gut; in no world could Shiki ever imagine being able to leave it behind.

So to hear that? That this envy didn't have to be a bad thing? That she could be jealous and still love Eri, be jealous and still be herself—learn to love herself? That it was Neku who gave her that?

And that day, at the end, she said, “Neku? Thanks,” but what she really meant was _I forgive you._

So she understands, a little, the thing between Neku and the boy named Joshua, even if she doesn’t like it. She understands. And when Neku told her the story, she took it and tucked it away, that Joshua was Composer and powerful and dangerous and sometimes cruel—but he was also someone Neku trusted.

And she’s thinking of that, still—remembering the story, and the way Neku told it; remembering forgiving Neku. And she’s thinking of the Reapers, and the Game, and of that last day in the rain, facing the Game Master head-on, standing up and standing strong and saying: _I'm coming back to Eri, and **you** aren’t stopping me._

She looks up into the entrance of the Shibuya River. She curls her fingers to fists. Mr. Mew dangles from one hand.

She walks inside with her head held high, and refuses to let herself shake.

.

The door lets her through. She’s not sure why—if it's because she’s in the RG or if it’s because there are so few higher-ranking Reapers left to challenge him that Joshua honestly doesn’t see a reason to block her or anyone else out—but Shiki’s not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, as Rhyme would say, so she sets her jaw and pulls back her shoulders, and marches right on in.

It’s... as creepy as it was the first time around, she thinks, and _cold,_ too, even with her sweater. She shivers a little and draws the green cardigan higher up her shoulders, taking strength from it. Mr. Mew is a comforting weight in her hands, but the deeper she walks in the more Shiki has to double-check: the warmth of her green sweater, the darker tan of her hands compared to Eri’s, the bobbed cut of her darker hair and the thin weight of her glasses on her nose. She’s Shiki. She’s _herself._ No matter what she remembers of this place, she’s here now stronger and better than before. She’s walking these halls with her own two feet.

Despite her conviction, though: it really is creepy. The quiet drip of the water from above, the slow trickle of the deadened river, the long, empty hall stretching on and on. She exhales hard and isn’t surprised when her breath fogs.

“Hello?” Shiki tries, and no, nope—the silence is somehow worse when nothing answers. She exhales harder, angry at her own fear, and draws herself tall. Her footsteps click quiet down the hallway. She’s dressed well for this. She likes these boots. Comfortable, cute, and good for running. “Helloooo?”

Nothing.

She thinks of the phone call, of Beat babbling over the speaker. “ _It happened again, yo, I saw—I wasn’t fast enough—I wasn’t enough, Shiki, I—I'm sorry, Phones—oh, fuck, Phones—”_

When she speaks again, she feels very cold. “I know you can hear me. Or, I guess—you should. You probably already know I’m here. Maybe you even let me in... I don’t know.” She hugs Mr. Mew to her chest. “Beat mentioned you. You saw what happened, right? You know what’s going on?” She stares into the darkness. Nothing. “I know we don't know each other very well, but I— Neku trusts you. Despite everything. So I’m going to try too.” 

Still nothing. Shiki rubs one of Mr. Mew’s paws between her fingers and draws strength from the stitching. The remembered pride of creating this little stuffed cat, the dedication, her fingers bloody from needle-pricks and the way she’d smiled for days once she’d finished. “I need to talk to you,” she says, louder now. “I need to— I need your help! You’re the Composer, right? You brought us back, right? Joshua—”

“I didn’t say you could call me that.”

The voice is young, boyish, chiding… and utterly unexpected. Shiki startles so bad she almost falls over, and turns around so quick she almost gets whiplash. Mr. Mew is squeezed in a death grip. She splutters. “Y-You—that was—give some warning!”

The boy who had _definitely not been there a second ago_ just smiles at her. Shiki’s heart abruptly lodges in her throat. She feels cold again. Oh, she thinks. She recognizes him. Only barely, only briefly, but... the pale hair, the bright eyes. The way he’s smiling. She knows him. Joshua—the Composer. Or something. 

“Um,” Shiki starts, and then forgets everything she’d planned to say.

The boy waits, and when the silence stretches, he smiles. “What,” he says. His eyes are bright. “Nothing to say? And after you came all this way.”

 _That_ kickstarts her brain. Shiki takes a breath and sets her feet. It’s fine. She’s fine! Reapers and Noise and even a dragon... and maybe the Composer is stronger than all those things, but Shiki knew this going in. She knew the moment she answered the phone—the moment she walked up to the door.

“I need your help,” she says, and Joshua raises an eyebrow. 

“Wow,” he says. “So forward. And demanding. And I should help you... or even listen to you, I might add... why, exactly?”

She stares at him. “Because Neku's—hurt,” she says, stumbling over the words. The boy's smile widens. She kind of hates it. “He _needs_ our help!”

“Mm-hm.” Joshua tilts his head. “Okay. That doesn't answer my question, you realize.”

Okay. Okay. All-powerful being who could smite her or not, Shiki’s starting to get a little angry here. She takes a deep breath. “Neku… he’s in the Game again, right? I wanted to ask if you could—”

His eyes are suddenly cold. “Neku's dead,” Joshua says, blunt. Shiki falters, the words dying on her tongue. “I won’t stop the Game for him, or for anyone. Even if he was in my Game, I’m afraid that just isn’t done.” He smiles again, but his demeanor has visibly chilled. “Well, this was fun. See you—”

But Shiki isn't listening anymore. “That’s not what I was going to say!” she snaps, hotly. “I wasn’t going to ask you to—” Her mind derails. She stops. “Wait, w-what? What do you mean _if_ he was—Neku’s not in the Reaper’s Game?”

Joshua’s tilted his head, though; he looks curious. “Oh?” He blinks. “Don’t tell me you want to join him in the Game. Trust me, you don't need _my_ help for that.”

Yeah, Shiki knows. But she also knows she couldn’t. She couldn’t hurt Eri like that, couldn’t hurt Neku or Beat or her parents… couldn’t do that to herself. Maybe this body won’t ever be what Shiki wants it to be, maybe her reflection won’t ever quite match who Shiki _knows_ she is… but it’s hers. She is Shiki Misaki, and she’s worth something all on her own, and she won’t forget that again. She’s not who she used to be.

But Joshua isn’t wrong, either: he just hasn’t figured it out yet, why out of all people Shiki needs _his_ help, because the only way this works is if he agrees. “Maybe not,” she says, voice small. “But you’re the only one who could let me in as an illegal Player.”

Because Neku told her everything—even the lie, even what he’d thought was the truth. And this time when Joshua looks her over, reading her mind or just her face or whatever it is Composers do, she knows he gets it, because he finally stops smiling.

“...Huh,” he says, but he doesn’t sound much pleased. He crosses his arms, one hand lifting to twirl a strand of hair. “Hm. Well. An interesting idea.” He stops mid-motion. “Though you _do_ realize that just because I break my own rules doesn’t mean I’m going to let you do the same, don’t you?”

“I—I get that,” she admits. “I do. But I'm not—I get it, I know Neku has to win the Game to come back, that’s the major rule, but—but the risk’s the same, right? If I get erased in the UG, I’ll die in the RG too, I’m just... skipping a step to the entry? The Game itself—I’m still playing with the same stakes! Um. R-right?” She thinks. 

Joshua doesn’t say anything. His eyes are narrow. “It’s an entertaining idea, I’ll give you that. Unfortunately...” He trails off, hands rising in an open shrug, and sighs heavily, falsely regretful. “I’m afraid I just don’t have any more use for Neku, really. He’s done his duty, and very well, too... and now it’s time for him to retire. I advise you just accept it and move on.”

There’s static in her ears. Shiki is frozen still. She gapes at him. Joshua smiles back, and it doesn’t reach his eyes. He flicks his fingers at her. “Ta. You can leave now.”

“What are you saying?” She sounds so quiet, even to herself. Strangled. Cold all the way to her bones.

He sighs again. “Look—”

“How can you _say_ that!?” Something’s buzzing in her ears, burning in her blood. She can’t breathe. “You can’t—how could you—I thought he was your partner too!”

Joshua’s smile flickers. Shiki barrels on before he can speak. “He'd do it for you!” she snaps, feeling something angry and hot climb up behind her eyes. When she'd died… it had mattered. Her parents had left flowers by the spot, and even Eri—Eri, who Shiki had been so afraid to see—she'd cared so much she'd almost given up her whole dream just because Shiki wasn't there with her. And it had hurt, to hear that—to know she was so loved, and how much she had left to lose by failing the Game—but it mattered. To hear that. To _know._

So she can't imagine this—can't imagine if someone spoke about her the way this boy is speaking about Neku, like he's nothing, like he doesn't matter, like the only reason to save someone is because they're _useful._ It makes something coil in her gut. It makes her throat close up tight. 

“He'd do it for you!” she repeats, scandalized, and Joshua isn't smiling at all now and she should really watch that—but she’s too angry, suddenly, too mad to think. Her arms are ramrod-straight by her side, Mr. Mew swinging from one shaking fist; she stomps her foot against the ground and it doesn't feel like enough. “He— he didn't shoot you in your stupid duel and he never hated you even when he was mad at you and he always invites you to our meetups and—and even _I_ know that, he didn't even tell me that, I just know! Because you’re his partner! He—and you—”

She’s losing her words. She wants to scream. “Never mind! Never mind! I don't get why Neku cares about you at all! You clearly don't deserve it! I'll save Neku myself, you—you— _argh_!”

She wants to strangle him, but she’s not that far gone. Shiki stamps her foot again instead of hitting Joshua in the face like he deserves, and marches down the hall, shoving past him, heading for the exit. Fine, fine, fine. She'll figure something out. She will _._

“Neku is a special brand of stupid.”

Shiki takes it back. She's going to hit him. She turns around, livid, words rising on her tongue, and then she sees Joshua fully and stops. He has one strand twisted around his finger; he's staring off into nothing, into the darkness of the sewer, looking something like thoughtful, or maybe tired, or maybe just blank. “He is,” he adds, when Shiki doesn't say anything. “Anyone else would have taken the shot. Should have...”

He trails off, then sighs again. “It doesn’t matter. Like I said before: he’s not in my Game. Someone’s trying to jack Shibuya, and frankly, she's _annoyingly_ good at covering her tracks. _If_ Neku’s in a Game, it’s not one I'm running.” He makes a face, briefly. “And fine, yes, I can guess where he is, but your idea only works if there’s other Players to pact with. If he’s where I think he is… and if _she’s_ running it… well, I doubt there’s anything left in that city at all, Player _or_ person. Even if I was so inclined to sneak you in, you’d be less than useless. No partner…”

He stops there, the words unsaid but understood. No partner, no power. Shiki would be nothing but more food for the Noise.

Shiki stares at him. She turns her eyes away. His admission has pulled the rug out on her anger; she’s not sure how to feel at all. “...Oh.”

“Mm.” He's silent, for a moment. Shiki stares at the ground. In the distance, water drips. 

“Could...” Her voice falters. Shiki swallows. “Could you get me in,” she says, haltingly, “as an illegal Player... if I was already in a pact?”

He tilts his head, giggling a little at the thought. “Wow. You’re just full of ideas, aren’t you? Let me guess. Daisukenojo Bito? His sibling? Or what about your friend… Eri, was it?”

This time, though, Shiki’s ready for him. “What about you?"

He seems, for a moment, to be at a loss for words. Then he smiles again. “No.”

“But—”

“It's a grand idea, really. But you aren't really suited to be around, well, _me_ —for a long period of time. And I can't exactly leave Shibuya unguarded.”

What? That’s news to Shiki. “But Neku was fine,” she says, bewildered, and Joshua smiles, a little sideways.

“Well, he was fighting for you.”

Oh, Shiki thinks, and for a moment it just kind of hurts, to be reminded of that. To remember how much she'd come to mean to Neku. Like Eri almost giving up their dream—something painful, but not all bad. It’s never a bad thing, Shiki thinks, to know you’re loved. She draws herself taller. “Then it's fine,” she says stubbornly, and when Joshua raises an eyebrow at her, she says, “I'm playing for Neku. So it's fine.”

He snickers. “That's not at all how it works, but I'll give you points for tenacity.”

“I don't care,” Shiki says, more firmly. “If it's what we have to do, then I'll do it. I'll do whatever it takes.”

They finally got back. They were all finally _together._ And Shiki could look Eri in the eyes again and not hate herself while doing it, and Beat smiled all the time now and Rhyme, Rhyme was dreamless but happy and, they said, willing to try and find a dream again. Rhyme was _alive._

Neku was happy.

Joshua’s smiles fades, a little. He considers her. Shiki stands still and tall and tries her best not to fidget.

Joshua takes a moment to think about it. He twirls one section of hair around his finger, tugging at the strand. And then he is smiling again, and that brightness is back in his eyes. “Well,” he says. “All right then, Shiki Misaki. You have yourself a deal.” His smile flashes to a grin. He giggles. “I guess you can call me Joshua after all... partner.”

Shiki meets his gaze and smiles back. He’s rude. He is, she realizes, a little cruel. When she can do so without getting immediately smited, she’s going to break his nose for ever talking like he was going to leave Neku to die. But maybe he does care about Neku, maybe it does mean something to him too, because she can't see any other reason why he'd agree.

And Neku trusts him.

Shiki isn’t sure if she feels the same, but she knows how the Game is played.

“Call me Shiki,” she agrees, and the last thing she hears before the pale flicker of the binding pact blinds her, and the world flickers around her like bad static, is Joshua, laughing again.

The pact snaps into place—

—and then Shiki is somewhere else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shiki, breaking into Joshua’s house: please help me commit a small crime
> 
> Joshua, legit just ten minutes post claiming to Hanekoma he doesn’t care about Neku at all like the lying liar he is: that’s a terrible idea. absolutely. lets go right now
> 
> Joshua is an interesting character to write. On one hand, he’s kind of terrible. On the other hand, he’s definitely been affected by the Game too. One the other other hand… hahaaaaa, watch him try to avoid his own character development like a pro. Or not like a pro. He’s kind of failing badly at it, if you can’t tell. He’s just hiding it with style. (I love him. I hate that he’s my favorite, but THERE YOU GO.)
> 
> That said, Shiki’s just as interesting!! I really love her character! She’s so fierce when it comes to other people, yet always struggling to give that same courtesy to herself. She’s not all the way there yet, but she’s coming to value herself bit by bit, and writing that made me grin like a fool. Her story always hit me hard. Shiki!! Deserves!! Good things!! 
> 
> Next up: Beat! Poor, poor Beat. Dude never catches a break.
> 
> [If you wanna rec this fic, you can reblog it here!!](https://izaswritings.tumblr.com/post/625469422999666688/all-thats-left-in-the-world-chapter-two) Also, if you have any questions or just want to talk, [my tumblr](http://izaswritings.tumblr.com) is always open!! (I'm also on twitter as @izabellwit !)
> 
> Any thoughts?


	3. beat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the wake of Neku's second death, Beat struggles to pick up the pieces. The board's been set, the players chosen... let the Game begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter three!! A whole day early!! I'm hoping to post updates on Sundays from here on out. Monday's just... don't work for me, haha.
> 
> I'm really excited to share this one with y'all!! With this chapter act i has come to a close and act ii can begin. I have a lot planned, and I can't wait to write it!! I really hope you guys enjoy. Your reactions to last chapter had me smiling all week. Thank you so much for reading!!
> 
>  **Warnings:** cursing, referenced character death via Neku’s situation/Reaper’s game, references to canonical murder attempts (successful and failed), self-esteem issues, and mentions of blood and bodily harm, though nothing graphic. Let me know if there's anything I missed!

Beat doesn’t know what to do.

He’s trying—holy shit, is he trying—but his mind is drawing a blank, and this time there isn’t even a stupid monster to blame or to distract him, because Miss Murderous Reaper girl ran away seconds after prissy kid shot her in the shoulder. And yeah, actually, that’s not helping either—the fucking backstabber, the kid who got Neku killed the first time, showing up to—what, save them? And failing, because Phones—Neku is—so what’s even the fucking point, right? Asshole should have stayed gone. Maybe Beat would actually be able to think of something to do if the prissy kid hadn’t shown up and made it even more confusing.

(But at least the prissy kid actually _did_ something. What did Beat do? Stand there and—and watch—and Phones, god, Beat had been looking at him right in the face, and his eyes had just gone _blank_ and—and—)

Beat is trying not to think about it. Beat is trying to think of what to do. 

Beat may actually be panicking, a bit, in hindsight. That kind of just makes him feel worse, honestly. Where’s Phones when you need him? _Come on, get it together._ Yeah, that’s what Phones would say. He’d done it more than once during their last week, whenever Beat had begun to buckle. _We’re going to finish this. We won’t let them win._

_Don’t fall apart on me now._

The prissy kid is gone, now. Took one look at where Neku had fallen with a face gone totally dark, and then his head had snapped up and away towards—just away, maybe, like he was trying to see past Shibuya into Shinjuku, or Tokyo, or even beyond that. And then he’d turned around and vanished before Beat could even think to move, to grab him and shake that stupid collar and demand answers.

Beat presses a hand to his forehead. Pathetic, he thinks. Phones doesn’t need Beat freaking out, he needs—he needs—something. Probably. He doesn’t need this shit, anyhow. Beat has to pull himself together. Beat has to think—or at least find someone else to think for him, because his mind is buzzing with static and his vision keeps on going blurry around the edges, like a heat haze. Ugh.

Phones’ body is gone, whatever that means. There’s still—blood, though, all over the ground, and Beat—Beat can’t do this. He’s got to stop. He’s got to...

 _Again,_ Beat thinks. For a moment his hand shakes. _Man, why does this keep happening to me?_ That speeding car, the Noise... he’d thought he was past this. He’d thought—finally, he was strong enough, fast enough, _enough._ If not to win, then to at least make a difference.

Always too late to help, but then—down there in that damn River, when they were chasing Shades and Beat’s only hope was Composerhood or bust... for once, just once, Beat had made it in time. When Shiki had been controlled, and attacked them from behind, Beat had shoved Neku behind him and—and he’d done it. He’d succeeded. He’d gotten knocked out cold and had ached like _hell,_ because damn did Shiki hit hard... but that was fine. Beat could take the hurt. That was the whole point.

But maybe he hasn’t changed as much as he thought, considering. What good had he been here? He’d seen it coming. The gun, that damn Reaper girl’s twisted face—and he’d still been too slow to push Phones out of the way.

_I don’t wanna keep seeing this, yo!_

He curls his hands to fists to keep from shaking; his throat feels all tight and knotted. He stares down at the ground and squeezes his eyes shut. No time for a fucking pity party. Man, Phones wouldn’t do this, if it were him here. Phones would... would...

Beat fumbles for his phone. Phones, he thinks, wouldn’t do this alone. Neither of them would. Partners, right? Beat remembers the Game just fine. He knows the rules.

He calls Shiki, first, because he’s got to, because she’s the one who has to know—because its Phones, and Phones and Shiki are just like that. It’s one of the worst calls of his life. Shiki’s stuttering and quiet and awful, and then she says, “Okay,” like she’s got an idea, and hangs up. Beat stares down at his cell like he can find an answer there, and when nothing comes he picks up the next number.

Man, he doesn’t want to call them. He doesn’t. Of all the people he wants dragged into this, Rhyme is the last on the list. But... but Rhyme was in that weird fake reality place, right? The distorted Shibuya? And that means they’re already involved, maybe.

Beat makes the call. He’s going to beat Coco senseless for dragging them back into this, he thinks. For shooting Neku. For screwing with Shiki and Rhyme. For making Beat feel even remotely fucking grateful for the prissy kid’s help, man, the whole messed up scenario.

_“Beat?”_

“Rhyme,” Beat says. Damn, his throat’s all choked up again. He doesn’t know how to say the news without feeling like he’s fallen over, or like he’s getting hit by another car. “I—”

 _“Oh! Sorry, I didn’t give you directions, did I? Whoops.”_ They laugh, and Beat has to close his eyes for a second. Shopping. Right. God, why did this have to happen? _“I’m still in the department store, just moved shops. I can meet you—”_

“Rhyme, no, it’s not—it’s not about that.” He swallows hard. “Something—something happened, alright, you gotta...” He doesn’t know what to say. He takes another breath.

 _“Beat?”_ Rhyme isn’t laughing anymore. Beat feels like the lowest of the low. _“Beat, what’s wrong? You sound—what happened?”_

The words scrape out of his throat. “Sorry. I lied before. It’s been a weird day, but me and Phones, we thought it was over, then...” Beat curls his fingers around the phone. “Phones—Phones got shot.”

Rhyme is silent for a long moment. _“Oh.”_ Their voice has gone so small. Beat wants to kill Coco all over again.

“Y-yeah.” Damn, his voice is shaking. “I’m gonna—I’m gonna figure this out, okay, don’t worry, but I—I think that damn Reaper girl knows about you, maybe, so—Rhyme, you gotta promise me, yo. Go home, got it? Stay inside, stay safe, and I’ll—I’ll figure this out.”

Rhyme is quiet again, and then they hum, soft and considering. _“Beat, where are you?”_

“What? Uh, by that CAT mural in Udagawa, but why do you...” he trails off. Something clicks. “No, no, Rhyme! Don’t you dare—”

 _“Neku’s my friend too.”_ Rhyme exhales soft, their voice a faint crackle of static over the phone. _“I’m going to help. I’ll be there in ten minutes—don’t move, Beat!”_

“Rhyme, please—”

 _“Beat. You remember, right? Two heads are better than one.”_ He can hear their voice shake, a little. _“And I can’t just sit back and do nothing, y’know?”_

“Rhyme...”

_“Ten minutes. You better wait for me, Beat!”_

The phone clicks off. Beat squeezes his eyes shut, sliding down the mural wall, burying his head in his hands, trying to breathe. He can’t even find the words to tell them no. Fuck, he’s useless. What is he supposed to do?

Footsteps slap against the stone; Beat snaps his head up, stunned. “Yo, yo, that’s way too fast—” He stops mid-word, blinking. “S-Shiki?”

The girl straightens up, breathing hard, pushing some hair away from her face and readjusting her hat. “She had to go somewhere else,” she says, and—oh, damn, Beat must be way more messed up than he thought. He still doesn’t know her all that well, but even so, he hasn’t mistaken Eri for Shiki in ages. “Beat, right? Shiki told me… are you okay?”

His throat feels all knotted up again. Man, Beat thinks, this is getting so old. “Did—did Shiki tell you what happened?”

“No, no, she just said... that you saw something, but I don’t...” She trails off, her eyes catching on the ground. She stutters to a stop, visibly blanching. “Wait. Wait. Is that—oh my god, is that _blood?_ ”

But Beat’s already noticed what’s wrong with this picture. “Wait, where’s Shiki, yo? What do you mean ‘somewhere else,’ man, where’d she go?”

“I don’t _know,_ okay, she wouldn’t tell me, she just said she had somewhere she needed to be...” Eri swallows. “Okay. That’s definitely blood. Okay. Is someone going to tell me what the hell is—” She looks at him, and falters, eyes widening. “You’re crying.”

Yeah, no surprise there. Beat wipes at his eyes with one arm, and takes a deep breath. He’s just gonna have to trust Shiki knows what she’s doing—she’s smart, and she’s resourceful, too. She’ll be fine. He hopes. “Yeah,” Beat says, dully. “I— Phones… Neku got shot.”

All the color drains from Eri’s face. “ _What?”_

“Yeah.” Beat grits his teeth. “In the Game again too, I’ll bet. Argh, it’s so fucked up! Some random Reaper, Coco or whatever. She shot him in the back and took off and I—” He has to catch his breath again. “I couldn’t do anything.”

Eri’s blinking fast, expression torn between confused and horrified. “G-game? Reaper?”

Beat stares at her. His eyes widen. “Uh—”

“Not important at the moment,” a new voice interjects. “Though, once this is all said and done and you’ve still got questions, little lady, I’ll be happy to answer them.”

Eri stills, stuttering back a step. Beat whirls around. “H-man!”

“Heya, kid.” Hanekoma looks the same as ever—casual slacks and hands in his pockets, except his face is set in a frown and his eyes are dark as he studies the street. He meets Beat’s eyes with a wry twist of the lips. “Sorry about all this. You holding up?” 

“I—yeah.” Beat shakes his head. “Listen, yo, you gotta help us, that Coco girl—”

“No worries, I got the gist.” Hanekoma raises one hand. “Listen, we don’t have much time. Let’s wait for Rhyme and then I’ll spell it out to you, all right?”

Beat hesitates. There’s a lot he could say to that. Like, hell, they don’t have much time but he’s still got to wait? Can’t coffee man just confirm if Phones is okay or not? How does he even know Rhyme is coming? But then, that’s Hanekoma. Not a bad guy, just a whole lot of weird. Beat doesn’t know _what’s_ up with him, but he sure as hell knows something’s up.

But all of that doesn’t matter, not really. That’s not what Beat wants to know. What matters—what he _needs_ —

“You got a plan?” Beat says, and tries to keep his voice steady.

Hanekoma grins at him. “Yeah.”

And that’s… that’s enough, in its own way. Beat lets out a slow breath, swallowing hard, and wipes his eyes dry again. “Alright,” he says. “Alright.” He sits down at the wall, folding his hands over each other, and rests his forehead against his fists. Phones trusted Hanekoma. Beat does too. He can wait.

Eri looks overwhelmed, though; she looks back and forth between them and the puddle of blood on the ground like she can’t decide where to turn. “What’s going on?” she says, a little angrier now, sounding freaked. “Who are you!? What are you talking about? Neku—and Shiki—” Red rises in her face. She’s breathing fast.

“Deep breaths,” Hanekoma advises, waving one hand down at her. “Sorry, sorry. I imagine it must be real confusing. Don’t have the time for the long convo, but I’ll try and give you a quick rundown.” He muses on the words for a second and sighs. “Phones got dusted, as Beat told you. But he’s not gone for good. He’s in what’s called the Reapers’ Game—a contest to come back to life.” He tilts his head. “You following?”

Eri laughs. Hanekoma watches her, calmly, and her laughter tapers off, false and uneven. Beat eyes her, shuffling on his feet. He kind of feels for her, honestly. He lived through the damn Game and this shit still doesn’t make sense to him. What asshole decided to make the afterlife so confusing?

“Sorry to say, it’s not the first time this has happened to Phones, either,” Hanekoma says, into the silence. “I’ll leave it to the other little miss to tell you that story, sometime. All _you_ need to know is that a Reaper—one of the ones who oversee the Games—has taken things into her own hands. She’s dragged Neku in with her. If you want my guess, considering what happened, oh, ten minutes ago… that’s where your Shiki ran off too.”

There’s a long pause. Eri stares at him. “You’re joking.”

“Ah, that’d be nice, wouldn’t it? But it’s the truth. You don’t have to understand it—I just need you to accept it.” He raises an eyebrow at her. “Unless you want nothing to do with this. That’s fine, too. It’s your choice.”

She visibly hesitates. Her fingers curl and uncurl into weak fists, like she’s trying to ground herself. “I...” Her expression hardens. “I don’t believe this. You—I can’t believe I’m even listening to this!”

Beat bristles—but Hanekoma tilts back his head and laughs, and Eri’s expression falters. “Very fair!” he says. He sighs, laughter fading. “Well, it’s your choice.”

“I… I…” Eri steps back. She reaches for her phone. “Screw this.” She turns away—from Hanekoma, from Beat, from the bloodstains still drying on the ground—and taps hard at the keys. She holds the phone up to her ear. “Shiki? Shiki, pick up!”

“Uh—” Beat starts, but Hanekoma holds up a hand. His expression has gone solemn. On the other side of the street, Eri’s voice has risen. “What?” He sees her take the phone away, tapping hard at the keys again. Something in Beat’s gut sinks. “No, no. Disconnected? What?”

Hanekoma just watches.

“It’s barely been twenty minutes,” Eri says. “It’s barely been—” She whirls on them. “What did you do to Shiki!?”

“Nothing,” Hanekoma says, simply. “She chose this herself. Honestly, it surprised even me. Don’t think J ever saw it coming.” He sighs. “It’s no joke, little lady. And we don’t have much time to waste. Best decide now.”

A long silence. Beat holds his breath.

“Shiki... is Shiki really gone?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Hanekoma tilts his head. “She’s where Neku is, I’ll bet. Or trying to find him. None of them are gone for good, though. Not if we play our cards right.”

“...Fine.” Eri’s hands curl into fists, and this time they stay there. “I don’t know what you’re on about, but—whatever. Whatever! Fine. If it helps get Shiki back, then I’ll... well, it depends on what you ask us to do, but I’ll help.” She looks away, briefly. “She owes me one hell of an explanation,” she says, lowly. “And... and Neku’s important to her, too. So fine.”

Hanekoma is smiling, faint but pleased. “Glad to hear it.” His head lifts. “And ah, here’s the last of us.”

Beat snaps his head up. It’s Rhyme, this time, for real—skidding around the corner like they sprinted the whole way here, out of breath and leaning over their knees. “Rhyme!”

They scramble upright, eyes wide. “Beat!” Their face falls. “Are you okay?” Then they see Hanekoma. They blink quickly. “Wait, what’s happening?”

Hanekoma grins. “A counter-attack.” He gestures them over. “Come on, you three. I’ve got a favor to ask.”

“A favor?” Rhyme approaches, jogging slightly; they detour to catch Beat in a hug, and he returns it whole-heartedly, hugging back just as hard. Rhyme’s shaking a little, all faint and thin, and he squeezes them again for good measure, swallowing back another plea for them to go home. He knows Rhyme—they’ll never listen. Even before the UG, whenever he told them to leave him alone, they were always at his heels, just a few feet behind. The memory makes his eyes burn.

Rhyme holds onto him for a good few seconds, then turns their head to Hanekoma. “What kind of favor?”

“Well, it’s complicated.” Hanekoma grimaces. “First off—you can back out of this. All three of you. I want to make that clear. This is volunteer-basis only. Just because I think you lot are the right ones for the job doesn’t mean you’re the only ones. Hell, I’d do it myself, but....” He sighs, scrubbing a hand back through his hair. “Josh dipped about ten minutes ago. Means I’m the only one watching over Shibuya.”

Rhyme makes an understanding noise, and pulls away from the hug. Beat rests his hand on their shoulder. He knows, he _knows_ the Noise eating them wasn’t real this time around... but still. He takes some measure of comfort by the fact they’re here alive and well. “You need us... to go outside Shibuya?”

Hanekoma grins. “Bingo. There’s something going on here, and to figure it out... well, we need to track down the main players.” He holds out his hand, palm up. “Little miss supposed Reaper, Coco...” He closes his hand. “And the survivor of Shinjuku.”

There’s a beat of silence. Eri says, voice strangled, “ _Survivor_?”

A pause. Mr. Hanekoma’s hand falls. His expression has gone serious. “Shinjuku fell,” he says bluntly, and Beat gapes at him, feeling a little like a hole has opened up in his stomach. “About, say... thirty minutes ago, around the same time Phones got shot. We in the UG call it Inversion. There’s no break between the grounds anymore—Noise are manifesting in the RG.”

Beat splutters. “Woah woah woah, _what?”_

Eri points at him. “What he said.” Her voice is shaking, a little. “I didn’t get most of that, but— are you saying it’s the _apocalypse?”_

Hanekoma tilts back his head and barks a laugh. “No, no, nothing so dire! Well, I mean, if they get Shibuya, it’ll be bad for us, but it’s not like it’s worldwide or anything. Shinjuku, though...” He tilts his head. “I’d be prepared. It’ll be something like a nightmare, at any rate. Can’t say I know what’ll happen.”

Rhyme nods slowly. “And you want us to go in there.”

“Like I said. Volunteer only. This isn’t a job without risks.”

Rhyme considers this. They nod, firm. “I’m in.”

Beat straightens. “Rhyme—”

They look up at him. Beat deflates. “Yeah,” he says, lowly. “I’m in too.”

“...This is crazy.” Beat looks up, turning to Eri; she’s shaking her head, arms curling around herself in a makeshift hug. “Everything you’re saying, I—I don’t—and you two are just accepting it and—” Her hands flutter in the air, like she’s grasping for something, and then she pulls them back and crosses her arms, shaking faintly. “Oh, my god. Okay. Okay! Who do we need to find?”

“It’s up to you how you want to split it up.” Hanekoma hums, one hand on his chin. “But, ideally... little miss, you and Beat go looking for Coco—” He nods to Rhyme. “And you look for the survivor.”

Beat’s hand tightens on Rhyme’s shoulder. “No way, yo. You want us to split up? Not happening!”

But Rhyme looks thoughtful. “Why me?”

“You left a part of yourself in the UG, kiddo. And I suspect you remember more than you admit.” Hanekoma’s gaze is piercing. Rhyme doesn’t deny it. Beat feels something in his gut drop. “This survivor, well... she’s something special. She’s the key to the whole mess, I’ll bet. And something tells me you’re the only one who’ll be able to get through to her. Call it intuition.”

“She in a bad way?”

“Mmm, of sorts.”

Beat can’t listen to much more of this. “Hey, no, wait—” Rhyme pats his hand. “Rhyme!”

“I’ll be okay.” Their hand drifts to their pocket, and they look down for a moment, drawing something out, fingers curled to a loose fist. Their hand opens, just a little. Beat can only just see it, a glimpse through Rhyme’s curled fingers, but he doesn’t understand much of what it means—it’s just a small, blank white pin, empty and hollow.

It must mean something to Rhyme, though, because they nod and stuff the pin back in their shorts' pocket. “I’ll do it.”

Hanekoma nods solemnly back. “I appreciate it.” He points over his shoulder. “Head down to my cafe and keep going down that street—I don’t know if the survivor is still in Shinjuku, but that’s about where we think she was heading.” He frowns. “Oh, another thing.”

“What is it?”

“Noise in the RG, remember? They can hit you now. And being in the RG, well… you lot won’t be able to hit back.” He opens his hand again, and in his palm, three pins shine silver in the light. Beat blinks, startled. They look like the Player Pins—only inverted, black skull on a silver backing.

Hanekoma flips the pins in his hands and then flicks it at them. Beat catches his one-handed; Eri fumbles with hers, looking like she isn’t sure whether to fling the thing or keep hold of it. Hanekoma keeps the last pin in his hand.

Beat studies his, squinting in the light. Ugh, he hates crying. His vision always gets so blurry afterward, and even now, knowing Phones has a chance, his hands are still shaky. Man, he’s got to pull it together. “Huh? What’s this?”

Hanekoma grins. “Specially made, RG only. This should help keep the Noise off your back, if you play it safe. Don’t lose it, yeah?”

Well, good enough for him. Beat nods and slips his in his pocket. Eri reluctantly does the same. “Sweet! But what about Rhyme, yo?”

“Mm, well. That depends.” Hanekoma offers the pin out to Rhyme, eyebrow raised. Rhyme considers it. They reach out one hand, and then their mouth twists, and they pull their hand back empty-handed. Beat blinks, alarmed—but all Hanekoma does is nod, and tuck the last pin away. “Thought so. No problem. Just watch your step, kiddo. You might be okay even without one.”

Rhyme breathes out. “Right. Thanks anyway!”

Beat looks between them, concern mounting. He tightens his grip on Rhyme’s shoulder. “No way, yo, wait a moment—hey!”

Rhyme half-skips forward, slipping right out from under Beat’s hand, and then turns around on their heel, smiling up at him. “Don’t look like that. I’ll be okay.”

“I thought two heads were better than one, yo.” Beat feels rotten. “I’ll go with you—”

“Eri doesn’t know much about the UG.” Rhyme bites their lip. “And I... I don’t know. I think this is something only I can do. I can feel it.” They tilt back their head. “There’s not a lot of people who lose the Game and come back anyway, right?”

Hanekoma shrugs. It’s answer enough. Rhyme nods. “Besides,” they say. “I mean, you have the harder mission! You’re tracking down a Reaper, right? That makes you the best one for that job, too.” Beat looks away, scowling. Rhyme softens. “I’ll stay safe. I promise.”

There’s no way they can promise that, but Beat is man enough to know there’s no changing their mind, either. He takes a breath. “Anything happens,” he says. “You give me a call—you start running—”

Rhyme smiles at him. “Yeah.”

“You better not get hurt, yo!”

“Don’t worry. I’m small, and good at hiding.” They step back a little. “See you soon, Beat.”

“...See you.”

He watches Rhyme run off down the street, heading for the cafe. He takes a breath and then turns on Hanekoma. “I owe you a lot,” he admits, roughly. “So I’ll trust you, yo. But if anything happens to 'em—”

Hanekoma tilts his head. “I’ll keep an eye on them.”

“You better.” Beat looks away, breathing deeply. “Okay. Whatcha need us to do?”

Hanekoma shrugs. “Just enter Shinjuku, track down Coco, and give me a call as soon as you have her attention. I can’t go looking for her, but once I know where she is...” He grins. There’s something bladed in it. “Just give me the word and then we’ll pin her down. Simple enough.”

“What,” Eri says. “Are we just supposed to hold this girl down until you show up? How would you even know where we are?”

“Haha! Good questions! Thankfully, you don’t need to worry about that. Once you start the call, I’ll be there.” He lifts one hand, smile crooked sideways and sly. “I’ve got my ways.”

Eri’s lips thin like she wants to argue. Beat scratches at his head. “Wait a minute, yo. I don’t even have your number.”

Hanekoma is grinning. Beat checks his phone. “…Now that’s just creepy.”

Eri’s looking at her phone too. She opens her mouth. She closes it again.

“Hey, don’t knock it. It’s a useful trick.” Hanekoma cracks his neck. “Don’t have much else to say, really. You two up for this?”

Beat breathes out, then grins, and raises up his fist in answer, trying to feel like he means it. His board is still lying half on its side from where it’d rolled off, once they got back to reality, and Beat brings his heel down on it, flipping it upright. He rolls the board beneath his foot and feels something in his heart steady. “Hell yeah!”

Beside him, Eri straightens. “Coco was the one who shot Neku?” At their nods, she nods too. “Got it. One sec.” She kneels down, rifling through pockets, and then stands back up, slipping a shiny pair of brass knuckles over one fist. Beat gapes at her. Hanekoma laughs. “Okay.”

“Yo, yo, you—” Beat shakes his head. “You just carry that around with you?”

Eri looks a little embarrassed. “I didn’t use to! I just, I don’t know, it’s just recently... I had a bad dream, I don’t know. It’s just a comfort thing. If something ever happens, I want—I want to have something on me that might help, you know? It’s useful now!”

Hanekoma has an eyebrow raised, something like realization in his eyes; Beat just nods. “That’s real smart, yo!” He grins at her, placing one foot on his board. “Badass! We’re gonna make a killer team!”

She giggles, a little. “Um, thanks.” She takes a breath. “Okay. Okay. Down the street, you said?” Hanekoma nods. “Got it. Now or never...” She starts walking down the road. Her hands flex over the brass knuckles. Beat can hear her, faintly, muttering under her breath, “Can’t believe I’m doing this.... can’t _believe_ I’m doing this...”

Beat goes to join her—girl hasn’t even asked what Coco looks like yet, but that’s fine, this is one thing Beat isn’t likely to forget anytime soon—but pauses, mid-step, at a second thought. “Hey, H-man. You got a sec?”

Hanekoma turns around, one eyebrow raised. He’s got his phone out, as if about to make a call. “Yeah?”

“I...” Beat hesitates, grumbling, then bursts out all at once. “Listen, yo, are you really sure I’m the right one for the job?”

Hanekoma considers him, silently. He tucks his phone away. “Why do you think you aren’t?”

“Listen, I... look, I know thinking isn’t my thing.” Beat swallows hard. “And hey, I get it, it doesn’t need to be, I just need to beat down whoever’s causing the trouble—but man, that Reaper girl, she was running circles around us, yo! If she’s hiding in Shinjuku… look, I’ve never been. I don’t know that place.” He grimaces. “I’m not... I want to help, any way I can, but if I’m just gonna slow us down—look, man, I don’t want some pity mission.”

Hanekoma blinks at him, and then he smiles, wry. “It’s not,” he says. “Trust me. I wouldn’t do that to you guys. I really do think you have the best bet of tracking her down.” He looks Beat up and down and shakes his head. “And you don’t give yourself enough credit. Listen up, Beat. What’s the most powerful force in the UG?”

Man, Beat’s feeling low enough without getting questions lobbed at him. “Yo, I dunno. The Composer?”

Hanekoma’s smile widens. He snaps his fingers. “Close, but no. Imagination. But you’re half-right—the Composer’s the one with the strongest Imagination, so it all fits in place.”

“Uh...” Beat takes a breath. “I don’t know if I’m that imaginative, Mr. H.”

Hanekoma barks a laugh. “No? Imagination is more than just dreams and creativity, you know. It’s passion—drive! It’s a will, not just a way.” He lifts a hand, gesturing to him. “And that, kid, you have in _spades._ Dreams don’t amount to much if you don’t pursue them. Throwing yourself at a wall that won’t break, over and over, because you know you need to get through, no matter what? Some people might have told you that was stupid, but I’d call it perseverance.” His smile widens. “Sooner or later, the wall breaks.”

“Pers—”

“Strength, Beat. Not just in your fists, but in your mind, too. That matters.” He tilts his head. “That Reaper girl, Coco—she’s clever. She’s planning steps ahead. But even if you didn’t understand the fake reality—well, you still knew, didn’t you? I’ll bet you took one look at Rhyme and just felt like something was off.”

“Well, yeah, but...” Beat grimaces. “What does all this hafta do with tracking her down?”

“Because she’s playing to outsmart us.” Hanekoma laughs again. “But Beat, you refuse to play at all. You’ve got good instincts, kid. And you act on ‘em. My advice? Follow your gut. Go wherever you want. You’ve got determination to spare, and the best hiding spot in the world won’t help her much if _you_ are scouring every inch of the city.”

Beat hesitates, considering this. Slowly, he grins back. “Well... alright. Uh, if you’re sure. I’ve got you covered, Mr. H.” He holds up his hand, fingers curled to a fist. “We’ll track her down and send her packing!”

“That’s the spirit.” Hanekoma is grinning. “Good luck.”

“Yeah, same to you!” He backs away, waving with one hand, and Hanekoma raises one hand back. Beat turns away and goes to join Eri by the street entrance. He’s not sure if he believes that whole speech—pretty words or not, Beat doesn’t feel like much at all—but he’s grateful to Hanekoma for trying. And hey, he’s not alone, right? Eri’s here too. It’s not the Game, maybe, but the rules always apply. Trust your partner.

Shiki cares a lot for Eri, and she’s pretty dang cool; Beat has no trouble on his end. He just has to make sure to return the favor. He’s going to do this right—he’s going to make it, this time.

 _Hold on, Phones_. He catches up to Eri and manages a smile. She smiles weakly back. They’re running, now. They’re sprinting for the streets, making their way out of Shibuya. To Shinjuku. To where Neku is.

 _Hold on,_ Beat thinks. _Just hold on, yo._

_It’s not over yet._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These kids are ride or die for each other and it kills me, it really does. Let them be happy...! (Says me, the one writing this fic. Oh well.)
> 
> I relate to and am envious of Beat on numerous levels. Talking has never been my strong suit. The number of times I’ve missed a joke or said a word and had everyone tell me I was saying it totally wrong?? SO MANY. Seeing Beat stumble over the same issue hits home. He knows what he means to say, and so do I—we just don’t say it right. And while I can laugh at it now, sometimes it still hits hard. It makes you feel foolish.
> 
> On the other hand, Beat’s drive? His focus? Holy shit. I aspire to have even a fourth of his sheer conviction. Even when he’s panicking and breaking down, it’s never “I can’t do this anymore” but instead, “can I do this fast enough?” Beat keeps going!! It’s honestly so impressive. For all that Beat doesn't think highly of himself, I've always found him admirable. Everything he went through in the Game, and he still kept trying. I love him so much.
> 
> Eri was a fun challenge this chapter too. Most of what we know of her comes from Shiki’s acting in Day One, and the little we see of her in Day Six. I’m trying to stay true to that—a bubbly girl with a lot of motion and life to her—but I’m taking some liberties, too. I hope you guys enjoy what I do with her! Our main four aren’t the only ones with a planned character arc. She may have gotten involved in this incident by accident, but now that she’s here, she’s ready to play!
> 
> As for Eri not knowing about the Game… I thought long and hard about it, and figured Shiki wouldn’t tell her. Like Shiki says, not all lies are bad. In this case, not telling Eri about the game makes so much sense. It’s hard to explain, hard to talk about… and the only thing it gains them is pain, not closure. What’s the point? (That said, that doesn't mean the Game hasn't affected her! The brass knuckles are a good example.)
> 
> There's my character analysis for the day, ahaha. Feel free to add your thoughts!! I love discussing stuff like this.
> 
> Next up: Neku and the terrible no-good partner.
> 
> [If you wanna rec this fic, you can reblog it here!!](https://izaswritings.tumblr.com/post/625999413654044672/all-thats-left-in-the-world-chapter-three) Also, if you have any questions or just want to talk, [my tumblr](http://izaswritings.tumblr.com) is always open!!
> 
> Any thoughts?


	4. neku

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neku attempts to come to an agreement with his new partner. "Attempts."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Sunday!! Welcome to arc ii, bonding times, in which our poor teams have to learn how the heck they’re going to work together. Starting with Neku, because Neku’s life is suffering.
> 
> In all seriousness though, hello again!! I’m so excited to share this one with you guys! We’re really getting into the story now, and I really hope you enjoy it! Thank you all so much for your amazing response to this fic. You guys leave the sweetest comments, and it’s honestly been making my whole week. Thank you so much!
> 
>  **Warnings:** cursing, references to past murder a la Reaper’s Game, mild body horror (in a Noise-human fusion case), and implied erasure. Nothing super graphic, but be warned!
> 
> Without further ado: chapter four!

**_I can’t hear a thing._ **

**_I hate it. I hate it. Where did everyone go? Where did everything…_ **

**_It’s so quiet. Help me. Please, help me._ **

**_…_ **

**_It’s too quiet._ **

.

.

.

Neku stares at the message for a long time. 

He doesn’t move, but his fingers tighten, stiff around the phone. _Kill the Composer of Shibuya._ No mistaking that one. No mistaking the signature, either, or the time limit counting down on his hands. Yeah, okay. Okay.

There’s so much about the situation that infuriates him, but somehow, it’s this that makes Neku want to break something. _Kill the Composer_ —be more original, he thinks, and grits his teeth. Always, always, kill the Composer. Well, poor fucking luck for her, then. Even if Neku wasn’t inclined to disregard every word Coco says by virtue of the whole being-murdered-again thing, this would cinch it. Why do people always pick Neku for this? Does he just have “potential assassin” written on his face or something? 

Neku isn’t going to kill Joshua. He got his chance, months ago, and it was a way better set up then this farce: his friends taken, Shibuya on the line, Joshua a liar and a killer and still smiling, mild, like Neku’s anger was something vaguely amusing. A gun in his hands and a countdown to boot. 

Neku hadn’t taken the shot, even then. He’s made his choice; he’s sticking with it. Joshua is an asshole—a liar—someone Neku is probably never going to be able to fully forgive. But he was Neku’s partner, too. And even this Neku can’t deny: the Game was horrible, but it changed him. He has friends now. He can see the world now. Sometimes, when he lifts his hands and closes his eyes, he can hear Shibuya’s music.

And yeah—it matters, too, that Neku’s still here. Because he lost, he’s pretty sure. He lost the Game. But Neku is alive and breathing and so are his friends, and they all have their memories, and even Rhyme...! And Shibuya is the same, except _not_ somehow, Shibuya is brighter than ever and its almost blinding.

It’s not enough for Neku to forgive Joshua. It doesn’t take away what was done. But... it says something. About everything. That maybe Neku isn’t the only one who was changed by those three weeks.

 _Kill the Composer._ Punch the Composer in the face, sure, but Neku clicks off the phone with a scowl. Sucks for Coco. Neku’s not playing this Game, thanks.

...Which is easier said than done. Sho Minamimoto, for example. And, you know, the time limit. Neku already knows what he’s _not_ going to do, but that does leave the question of _how the hell am I going to get out of this one._

Pi-Face must have been looking at the mission mail too, because now he’s laughing, a manic sort of snickering that makes Neku go still on pure instinct. Minamimoto, he’s found, only laughs like that when he’s about to, say, murder people, sick Taboo noise on them, or recite ten lines of pi and summon imaginary number explosions or some shit. Bad news either way.

“TANGENT,” Minamimoto shouts, and Neku blinks. “Fucking finally! This Game’s already getting zetta old, but this isn’t a bad solution at all.” His smile is full of teeth. “This is an equation I can get behind.”

 _Because facing Joshua worked out so well for you last time,_ Neku thinks, but keeps his mouth shut. He’d definitely noticed, with the ease of hindsight, how Joshua had killed Minamimoto—not with those burning beams of light that left scorch marks in the streets, but with the cars, the vending machines. And the casual way Joshua had dismissed him, that day in the throne room— _I liked keeping him around—_ well.

Neku knows he couldn’t beat Joshua, even if he wanted to, which, no. And Neku beat Minamimoto once before. It... well, yeah, it doesn’t speak well of this guy’s chances, probably.

But again. Never, ever saying that aloud, holy shit.

“Whatever,” Neku decides, because as annoying as Pi-Face is, they’re partners whether Neku likes it or not, and he knows how these things work. Minamimoto, still grinning, closes the phone, shoves it in his pocket, and starts walking away. Neku stares after him. “What?”

And... no, yeah, he’s actually leaving. Oh, god.

“Hey,” Neku snaps, and races after him. “Where are you going? We have to stick together.”

Minamimoto squints at him and then turns away. “What, you’re still here?”

“Yes, I’m still—” Neku bites off the rest of it. Must get along with partner. Must get along... nah, screw it. “We’re in a pact. We can’t fight the Noise alone. We have to stick together—”

“Nah,” Minamimoto decides, and keeps on walking.

Neku stares after him, struck with a sudden and dizzying appreciation for Shiki. Had Neku ever been this bad? Had Neku been _worse?_ How the hell had she not strangled him two minutes in?

He takes a deep breath. “Look,” he snaps. “I don’t like this much either, but if something happens to one of us, the other is _screwed._ I don’t like this any more than you do, but if we’re going to survive and figure a way out of this we have to work together.”

Still nothing. Neku narrows his eyes. Shit, okay. Math analogies, math analogies... “Unless you think you can make a working equation with _just you.”_ Does that make sense? Well, whatever.

It works, at any rate—Minamimoto pauses, and after a moment he looks back, considering. Neku crosses his arms and scowls, trying to ignore the sinking sensation in his gut. This might even be worse than his week with Joshua. For all of Joshua’s many, many irritating moments, he’d at least recognized and understood the basic principle of _stick together._ Death by no-one completing the mission had been a problem on day two, but Neku at least never had to worry about _death by negligent partner who won’t recognize we’re in a pact._

After a moment, though, Minamimoto snorts and turns back around. “Zetta annoying,” he decides. “You better not slow me down, you useless radian. I don’t have time to proof. Though I guess you’ll be some help when I get around to crunching the Composer.” He grins, at that, cracking his knuckles.

Neku’s not really surprised by that response, but still. “What, you’re actually going to do it?” Try to do it. Same thing.

“What,” Minamimoto mimics, “you aren’t?” The smile returns, all teeth. “Either we crunch the numbers, or the numbers are going to crunch us. Constants don’t get a say in how they’re used.”

Math-speak for _you’ll help me kill the Composer or I’ll make you_ , probably. Neku crosses his arms, unimpressed. “Sure,” he says, doubtful. “Either way, we have a problem.” He gestures around them the destroyed buildings and ruined streets. “I know Shibuya. This _isn’t_ Shibuya. How the hell are you going to find the Composer? We’re not even in the right city!”

Minamimoto shrugs. “A possible miscalculation,” he allows. “I’ll figure a solution.”

 _You inspire so much confidence,_ Neku thinks, irritated. “Like what, exactly?”

Minamimoto snorts. “None of your concern,” he says dismissively, and starts walking away again.

Oh, yeah. Just as bad as Joshua. Maybe worse, because at least Joshua didn’t make Neku do math. Ugh.

Neku scowls at Minamimoto’s back and follows, resisting the urge to drag his feet. For all of Pi-Face’s easy dismissal of the worry, Neku’s still stuck on it. This place... it’s familiar, sure, but not in a good way. It’s ruined, ash and dust and smog choking the air, Noise filtering about the edges... but he can still recognize it, if only sideways. Those strange visions that had been blacking out his sight all day... yeah, Neku knows this place. This was the city that got destroyed in the dreams. 

_Why am I here?_

He’s almost certain, now, that this is where Coco was trying to lead him and Beat; she’s succeeded in dragging Neku here, at least, but he still doesn’t know why. Why kill Joshua? No, wait, wrong question. Why try and kill Joshua like _this?_ A Reaper’s Game twisted beyond recognition, and a mission to kill Shibuya’s Composer in a place that clearly isn’t Shibuya. Can they even leave this place? Is this just a trap to get them erased by an impossible mission with a definite time limit? But then—why seven days to complete it? She could have set it to five minutes and dusted them that way.

It doesn’t make any _sense,_ Neku thinks, and tugs once at his hair in frustration before letting go. He’s sick of this. Plots and plans and Neku stuck in the strings, and _damn,_ he did not fucking miss this.

For a moment his hands shake. He squeezes his eyes shut, and exhales very slowly. His eyes are burning. And that’s—that’s fine. This is fair, isn’t it? He’d thought he was done with Games, but now he’s back here again, so it makes sense, it’s fine, he just needs…

He just needs a moment.

The air is so stiff here. Silent and empty. Every inhale is tinged with dust, and the city itself is a dead place—no wind, dead air, stale and settling and starting to rot. It’s hollow in a way that echoes. It aches. He misses Shibuya so suddenly it dizzies him. The crowds—the music—the world.

_I didn’t ask for this._

But it doesn’t matter. Not really. Neku’s made his decision, and he’s going to stick to it—his only concern is getting out of this. And hey, track record, right? He’s done the impossible before. He can… he can figure this out.

He opens his eyes, and exhales again. He grits his teeth and pulls himself together. Okay. He can do this. He _will_ do this. He’s going to figure out this new Game and he’s going to come back to Shiki and Beat alive and well. If Coco thinks she’s got him beaten, then she’s got another thing coming.

But still. As he picks his way across the ruined landscape, Neku can’t help but feel, with a sinking sense of dread, that there’s still so much worse to come.

.

They explore the city for a while, in silence—Minamimoto leading, like he’s forgotten Neku is there, and Neku trailing behind, keeping one eye on his irritating partner and one eye on their surroundings, wary of an ambush.

The city is... awful, Neku thinks, and the longer he stays here the more it makes his skin crawl. The streets are totally empty; the Noise are either _everywhere_ or nowhere at all. No more strange, distorted symbols in the air; no more chance of avoiding them. They always watch them pass with blank, gleaming eyes—and that’s another thing, too. The Noise aren’t right. The Noise are dead silent.

Everything, Neku is finding, is dead silent.

The Noise don’t make—well, noise. There’s no wind—no birds—nothing. Even their footsteps feel muffled and dim, as if Neku’s walking on cotton, unable to make any noise louder than a whisper. When he speaks, it feels like he has to shout to be heard—like the total silence of the city is swallowing his voice whole, taking it all in, giving nothing back.

The worst part, though, is that there’s no Music.

When Neku left the Reaper’s Game for good, and first awoke alive and well on the Scramble Crossing... memories, and friends, and nightmares hadn’t been the only things he’d taken away from the Game. Sometimes, when Neku closed his eyes and put his hands over his ears and just let the murmur of the city wash over him, he could hear it—a song, or the Song, Shibuya in entirety, a music he could never really describe and could hardly imagine living without. It was chaotic and chiming and... _Shibuya._ Just Shibuya.

It was a comfort. And now it’s gone.

And he knows—Neku knows, logically, that even if there was Music here it wouldn’t be the same—this isn’t Shibuya, isn’t home. But even so, he’d rather hear an unfamiliar song than this... nothingness. This absence. This void in the air where music used to sing and people used to laugh, and just—there’s nothing, now. There’s a lack. There’s a hole.

 ** _I can’t hear a thing,_** he thinks, and it feels like his thought and yet it feels nothing like him at all, and for a moment the silence presses down on him. Panic coats his tongue. Despair squeezes at his chest. It’s less pain and more an echo if it; someone else’s words, ringing through him. For a moment his vision washes out into white.

**_I hate it. Where did it go? It’s too quiet. Come back. Come back!_ **

Neku stumbles forward. Again. It’s happening again. He can hardly breathe. He presses a hand to his temple. “Who are you?” he whispers. He’s almost certain, now. This isn’t him. This is someone else. But who? “You keep—calling to me, who—”

 ** _Please help me._** Static fuzzes in his ears. His eyes burn. **_Help me._** _**Oh, god. Oh, god, please, someone help me—!**_

“Useless radian,” a new voice snaps, and the echoing words cut off with a snap, so quick it leaves Neku almost breathless. “Get up.”

He’s on his knees, Neku realizes. When had he fallen? He presses his hand against the concrete, gray and ashy beneath his palm, and lifts his head to glare.

Minamimoto looks unimpressed. “I don’t bother with inherently flawed calculations,” he warns, and then grins. “Match the parameters or get deleted, yoctogram.”

 _How nice,_ Neku thinks, dryly. Now he’s not sure if the headache pounding behind his eyes is from the echo, or just from listening to Minamimoto talk. Or both. Asshole.

“I’m fine,” Neku says, finally. His hands are shaking. He curls them against the concrete, and tries to remember how to breathe. “I… I’m fine.”

Minamimoto snorts. “Who gives a digit? Just get up. There’s a problem.”

“Huh?” Neku pushes to his feet, wavering a little. His legs feel shaky. He’s not in pain anymore, but the memory of that hollow ache is enough to make him shiver. That voice. That fear. Those visions, again. Just what is going on?

Minamimoto runs a hand back through his hair and grins, unsettling. “We have a new addition.”

“ _What_?”

Minamimoto lifts his chin towards the far end of the street, seemingly unconcerned. Neku follows his gaze. They’ve stuck to the main roads, thus far; this one is three lanes wide and shadowed by empty skyscrapers turned hollow and half-eaten, like they’ve been decayed from the top-down. The fog of white dust makes it hard to see, but if Neku squints…

A blurry shadow of a figure lingers at the end of the road.

Neku blinks. Not just a figure. A _humanoid_ figure. Moving. Holy shit. Is that… is there really someone else here?

His blood runs cold. _Coco?_ Or… could it be—the girl from his visions?

But there’s something _off_ about the figure, and Neku finds himself reaching for his pins before he can think better of it. He doesn’t trust this. Too much about this Game isn’t right—not just the missions, but even the rules of the world turned on its head. All of his pins work even when he’s not fighting the Noise. He doesn’t have a Player Pin, but he’s definitely in the UG. The Noise no longer pull them into an alternate dimension; they’re fully formed and waiting and watching, with eyes blank and white like a dead pin. And the silence, too...

No. This isn’t right. And as the figure shuffles towards them, Neku steps back and pulls a Lightning Rook to his hand, because he’s not so sure that’s a person, either.

Minamimoto is grinning, though something has turned sharp at the edges of his smile. “Ugh.”

“What is it?”

“I miscalculated.” He studies the figure and slides back into a stance. For a moment, he seems to blur at the edges. “Should have carried the evidence to its conclusion. Tch, embarrassing. This was simple math.”

Neku squints at the figure. They’re shuffling forward, coming into view, and when he sees them in full, he blanches. “Is that—”

“Yep.” Minamimoto makes a harsh noise in his throat, looking disgusted. “Inversion. The system’s all screwed up. Noise in the RG, UG in fractions... and sometimes you get equations that just don’t work out.”

 _Inversion? The hell?_ But there’s no time to ask. The figure is close enough now to see in entirety and— oh.

Neku can’t breathe.

They look—they must be—that’s a person, isn’t it? A businessman, he thinks, with slicked-back black hair and a pale gray suit, jolting faintly with every step. They must be a person. Except they have a Noise’s colorful scrawls winding all the way down their arms and face and there’s wings peeling out bloody and painful from their back and sharp teeth jutting from their gums and oh, fuck, Neku never wanted to know what a human-Noise combo would look like and he’s really not happy to have found out now.

The Noise humanoid opens up their mouth and _screams._ There is no sound, but the air grates. Neku slams his hands over his ears, and in the distance, Sho Minamimoto is laughing.

“Caught between the frequencies, are you?” he says, looking delighted. “So zetta cool. Zetta sucks, too. Don’t worry. You’re about to get deleted.” He draws back his hand. To Neku: “You better not slow me down!”

Neku falters. “Wait,” he says. “Wait wait wait, that’s a person, what happens to them if we—”

“Ugh, do the math!” _Zetta shut up,_ Neku thinks back. “What do you think happens to Noise-possessed people when it all gets Inversed?”

Neku stills. Noise-possessed people. Which means...

He draws back his hand. Okay. Okay. He doesn’t understand most of that, but... if they defeat this person, will that help? Will the Noise leave them? Will they go back to normal?

He doesn’t know. What he does know is that looks painful. Either way, Neku isn’t going to be able to back away from this. 

Minamimoto laughs and throws himself into the fight with a sharp, vicious war cry of “Infinity!” It is familiar in a way that makes something in Neku ache; he stills, and refuses to look beside him. Joshua isn’t there. Joshua isn’t with him. In fact, he hasn’t really seen Joshua in almost a month, not since the Game ended.

And yet. For a moment, he can almost hear the laughter.

Neku shakes his head. He’s not fighting Minamimoto, he’s fighting _with_ him, and he needs to start acting like it. Neku reaches for his pins.

“You better be right about this,” Neku snaps, and attacks.

Lightning Rook in one hand, Electric Warning, Velocity Attack, Raven, and two healing pins. Neku flips them through his fingers, watching Minamimoto dart across the area, and sets his feet. He still has the Fusion pin—he’d made sure to check, and thank goodness for that—which means so long as he times this right, they should sync up and hopefully be able to…

He preps the lightning in his hand, and then Minamimoto appears right in front of him.

“Shit!” Neku jerks his hand away—the lightning flashes and bangs, gone wild, darting up and out of range, crackling harmless in the air. What? What!? “Watch where you’re going, asshole!”

Minamimoto just cackles. “Useless components should just stay put!”

“Hey, wait!” In the distance, the Noise opens its mouth in a silent scream, and the world warps like putty. Pi-Face grins like a shark and vanishes from view. Neku curses at him, and throws himself down.

The air explodes above his head; Neku ducks out of range and then rolls back on his feet, angry now. “Are you kidding me?” he demands, to no-one, and reaches for his pins again.

The lightning jumps for his fingers eagerly. The power is a head rush. Neku grits his teeth and blasts at the Noise again. Despite all of his annoyance, the weight of the pins in his hands is a comfort. It’s almost soothing. He hates this, he hates fighting, but—

But Neku has missed this, too. That breath of power, that static on his tongue… he’d missed it. Why? He doesn’t want to. But he finally feels settled, feet flat on the ground. Minamimoto is an annoyance, this new Game a mystery, Coco a threat—but here in this fight, Neku is steady. _I can do this._

Minamimoto cuts him off again; Neku switches pins with a mutter and throws himself out of range of the Noise’s shockwave. The silent screaming thing is seriously starting to vex him. He takes up the pin again, aiming—

Pi-Face, sneering, flickers into view and kicks the Noise back. “ _So_ zetta slow!”

Neku grits his teeth. “Would you just—hey! We need to sync up! Stop getting in the way!”

Minamimoto scoffs. Neku clenches his fists. “You—”

And then Minamimoto is gone again—and then he is right in front of him—and then he is kicking Neku right in the side, hard enough to send him flying back. Neku just barely gets his arm up in time to block most of the blow; his whole forearm sears with pain. Minamimoto is grinning again, sharp and wild.

Neku stumbles, catches his feet, and stills, his pins burning in his palm. _Attack your partner is never the mission. It’s never the mission. It’s never—_

“What the hell are you doing?” Neku says, quietly. “Do you have any idea—”

“Cooperation is _trash,”_ Minamimoto says, far too gleefully. “We’re looped in the same equation, sure, but I crunch the numbers. Get in my way, you get factored out.” He steps away, turning his back, piece said. Neku sees red.

Raven has always been a favored pin. Neku tosses a streetlamp at him.

Minamimoto dodges, of course—and when he turns back around, his expression is frightening. “You are _so_ —”

“Partners!” Neku snarls, talking over him. “We’re in a _pact,_ you… we have to work together!”

“ _Crunch!_ That opinion was garbage. I’ll throw it on the pile.”

 _Must. Not. Murder. Partner._ “You’re not a Reaper anymore. You don’t have the wings, we’re in a pact, you have the same fucking timer I do—either we fight together, or we’re going to lose.” He takes a quick, tight breath. Sota. Nao. All those Players, even the Reapers… but Neku can’t afford to die here. “Work with me here. You don’t want to die again, right? Well neither do I! So help me! And let me help you.”

 _Asshole,_ he adds, internally.

Minamimoto looks like he’s considering it, which of course— of course! —is when the humanoid Noise attacks again. Go figure. Fucking fantastic. Neku wants to bang his head against a wall.

But when he rises from his dodge, Minamimoto flickers into view beside him again. He looks annoyed. Grudging. And his face twists up, but he says: “Fine. Whatever,” and it is not the glowing confirmation Neku was hoping for but god, damn, he’ll take it.

“Finally,” Neku mutters, and flips a pin. “Then let’s do this. If you take it from behind, I’ll blast it from the front.”

Minamimoto scoffs again. He vanishes without a word. Neku rolls his eyes, and sets his feet.

Lightning in the air, Minamimoto’s taunting insults, the Noise’s silent screaming and the warping air—but while they are not entirely in sync, this time it’s enough. The Noise is slowing, wing tattered and limp, face fuzzing from view—and the Fusion pin warms against Neku’s wrist.

He activates it. “Get ready!”

“Fucking finally! So zetta slow!”

“ _Argh,_ you—!”

It’s like stepping into a web. Lines and angles and numbers and—and Neku grits his teeth against the overload, the power slipping through his fingers, and reaches back. Equalities, balances, equals to. He clicks the numbers into place, and feels power burning through his hands.

(And for a moment: something is off. Something is wrong. A power that is neither his nor Minamimoto’s. Something else. Someone else? Not quite a pact, but… like moving in sync. A mirroring.

A connection.)

Something shatters.

It’s like white noise in his ears—the empty static—the imaginary plane. For a moment there is a hole in the world, in the sound, in the noise—there is music, sharp and rhythmic and singing through the air—and then they are back, and his ears are ringing, and there is a person, Noise-less, lying slumped on the street.

Neku blinks fast. The bitter taste of ozone lingers on his tongue. He breathes past it, and rushes for the body. “Hey! Are you okay?”

No answer. Oh, shit. Neku kneels by the man, reaching out, and freezes when his hand passes right through. “Wait—wait, _no—”_

The man fades away, as fragile as a dream. Neku doesn’t move.

Behind him, Minamimoto makes an interested sound. “So, the Inversion takes it all. Noise or nothing. A full circle.”

Neku curls his fingers. He still doesn’t know what the hell this _Inversion_ thing is, but he’s starting to get the gist. “You mean…” So there was no saving the guy? Either existing as a fusion with Noise, or not existing at all? Is this what’s become of all the people in this place?

Neku grits his teeth. He bows his head.

Minamimoto makes a scornful noise and turns away. “Let’s go,” he says, dismissively. “We’re subtracting time.”

Neku clenches his jaw and rises to his feet. Right, he thinks. Right. It’s not over yet. Whatever happened here, whatever this is… he still has time to figure this out. Maybe… maybe he can find out what happened to this place, too. To these people.

He’s not playing to win, after all. He’s playing to finish this. He can add one more mystery to the list.

But for all his determination, his mood has soured. Minamimoto is walking down the street, casual as he pleases, but Neku lingers on the road, subdued, bitter despite himself. He looks up at the sky, and thinks of the mission mail, of that almost-presence during the fusion, the almost-whisper in his ears.

High above him, the sky flickers cold and red. The clouds churn like boiling water. When he blinks, he can see the afterimage of it on his eyes, like an imprint of the Reaper’s skull, glaring down at him. Burning.

“Hey,” he says. “Are you there?”

He waits. But no one answers.

Neku blinks the red from his eyes until the sky is gray and cold once more, then turns and walks away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of my secret goals for this fic is to get Neku to say “zetta shut up” to Sho’s face and by god guys. By god. We’re getting there. SOON.
> 
> Sho makes me cry inside. I tried to write a future chapter with his POV and nearly sobbed. (Still love him, but oh my god. My god. The Math.) Neku definitely has it worse though. Sho’s defining trait, beyond the math puns, is how utterly isolated and anti-cooperation he is. You don’t get a score of _0%_ without being a right horror about it, I imagine. So basically, I was looking at my chapter plans and going, like, “oh fuck, _Neku._ ” Alas, poor kid.
> 
> Fun fact: Neku’s pin deck is based on my two personal favorite pins—Raven and Lightning Rook—and also all the pins best recced for… actually beating Minamimoto boss fights. (Raven probably doesn’t apply in this category, but god, do I love throwing those cars around.)
> 
> I’m having a lot of fun with the destroyed Shinjuku, too. I have a weird relationship with sound, which occasionally—often—leads to too much noise getting very overwhelming. But, to me, absolute silence is SO much worse. It kind of rings in your ears, you know? _Quiet_ is lovely. It’s hearing only your own breath, or a muffling of other sound, or just soft things. _Silence,_ though. Silence is nothing. And it’s awful. For Neku, who is just starting to get used to the music of a city, the murmur of a crowd? Oof.
> 
> Next up: Joshua! 
> 
> [If you want to rec this fic, you can reblog it here!!](https://izaswritings.tumblr.com/post/626000197878743040/fic-masterpost-all-thats-left-in-the-world-a) Also, if you have any questions or just want to talk, [my tumblr](http://izaswritings.tumblr.com) is always open!
> 
> I’m also on twitter as @izabellwit—come talk twewy with me!!
> 
> Any thoughts?


	5. joshua

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shiki and Joshua are in Shinjuku. What chaos shall they create?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week was murder on my poor unprepared soul, but I finished this chapter in time somehow and like… I’m actually very glad because I cannot WAIT to share this one with you guys, ahaha. I had so much fun with it!
> 
> Also, thank you all so much for your comments and kudos and just general interaction with this fic! It makes me so happy! It means the world to see your guys’ reactions to everything. Thank you thank you thank you!!
> 
>  **Warnings:** references to past canonical character death, self-esteem issues, vague descriptions of an apocalyptic event (Shinjuku at the moment of Inversion, etc), and Joshua, again. Let me know if there’s anything I missed, and I’ll add it on here!
> 
> Enjoy!! 💖

Joshua opens his eyes to a wasteland.

Beside him Shiki Misaki has fallen to her knees in the dust and dirt, hacking up half a lung; Joshua politely gives her a moment to collect herself like the very considerate and understanding person he is, and steps forward, scanning their surroundings with a frown. Empty streets filled with white dust that clings to his hand like snow; the air smells of nothing, devoid even of the stench of smoke. A low fog has settled over the city, so gray and dense it could be mistaken for a storm, the buildings vacant shells and the roads worn smooth and featureless. It’s more than a ghost town—it’s a city hollowed, its heart destroyed, and Joshua frowns momentarily, picking up his phone, fiddling with the settings.

For the first time, no call goes through. “Interesting,” Joshua decides, and tugs at one lock of hair, twining the strand around his finger.

“W-what is?” Shiki asks, and Joshua tilts his head and snaps his phone closed. Her breath catches. Ah, she’s noticed the city. “Where _are_ we?”

“Shinjuku, I believe,” Joshua says, and even though he’d guessed as much the sight makes him frown, disgruntled. Joshua’s always liked a good game, but this one promises to try his patience. “Well. What’s left of it, anyway.”

Her eyes scan the wasteland, expression faltering. “That’s impossible,” she says, though she seems half-convinced already. Quick to adapt, isn’t she? Maybe this partnership 2.0 won’t be so boring after all. “That’s... how could this be Shinjuku?”

“Inversion,” Joshua sighs, and when Shiki’s brow furrows at the term he giggles and waves his hand. “A UG phrase. The RG and UG have merged here. The planes have gotten all tangled together—too many frequencies at once.” And, actually, liable to give Joshua a headache. He misses Shibuya’s song already. Ironic, considering his plans for it just last month. “Noise manifest in the RG, reality gets unstable...”

She’s pale. “And this is where Neku is?”

“Mm-hmm.” Joshua shrugs. “Unfortunate, isn’t it?”

“Yeah...” Joshua blinks at her, but Shiki has already stepped away, looking up and down the empty street. “I don’t understand. Where are all the people? And the stores...” She peers into a shop window and blinks fast. “Huh?”

“Oh?” Joshua steps up beside her, peering through the window, and then leans back, hands in his pockets and eyebrows raised. “My, my. That’s certainly something.”

The shop is empty. Not just devoid of people, but of anything—the mannequins stripped featureless and bare, even the fake features wiped away. The hangers hold nothing. The stands are empty. Even the picture frames on the wall, the art and decor put up just for flavor, have become hollow, the frames undecorated, the pictures turned to white noise. 

Joshua lifts his hand, curious, and presses it against the glass. Against the blank slate of the store, he and Shiki and the colors they wear seem almost like a spotlight. Shinjuku is grey and cold around them, featureless and repetitive. Scrubbed clean of any life at all.

Joshua takes his hand back, frowning outright now. “Hm.”

“That’s so creepy,” Shiki says, drawing back a step. She shivers. “It’s like... anything that would have stood out, or anything that would have meant something...”

“A clean slate,” Joshua agrees, and rests his chin in his hand, thoughtful.

Shiki looks away, apparently unable to keep looking into the empty shop for long. “Is this... normal?” she asks, squinting up at the sky, like if she tries hard enough she’ll be able to see the sun. “For, uh... Inversions?”

Joshua giggles. “I have no idea.” It’d be a delightful mystery, if the situation weren’t so dire. He sobers. “This is the first time I’ve seen it myself. Though, I will admit...” He casts a glance at the sky, too. His eyes narrow. For a moment, there in the clouds... hm. “This doesn’t quite match up with the stories I’ve heard.”

“Creepy,” Shiki repeats.

“Quite.”

She rubs at her arms. “...Let’s go look for Neku.”

Ah, yes. Neku.

Joshua looks back at the shop, no longer smiling. His reflection in the display glass is pale and dim, faintly opaque. As if he isn’t quite there at all. He rubs at his arm, and wonders what Shiki would say if he told her Composers weren’t meant to stay outside of Their city.

Well, what’s done is done—he’s agreed to this, after all, and her reaction probably won’t be all that entertaining. Shiki Misaki, Joshua thinks, is too accepting. Adaptable to an annoying degree. At least Neku had a few moments of wanting to strangle someone before he compromised.

How funny, he thinks. The memory almost makes him want to smile, except he doesn’t feel like laughing at all.

In the dusty glass of the shop window, his own expression looks strange to him. Joshua turns away. He shakes his head and tugs at one bang, then drops his hand and sighs. “Yes,” he says, light. “Works for me. Lead the way, dear.”

She frowns at him, and he smiles back at her uncertain side-eye. And as Shiki picks her way across the city, and Joshua trails after her, he curls his hands to a careful fist, feeling the quiet tremor in his fingers with every step away from Shibuya, and cheerfully pretends that it hasn’t started after all.

.

It doesn’t take long for the first problem to rear its head. Ten minutes into the Game, Joshua and Shiki encounter their first Noise—and unlike how Noise are supposed to act, this one attacks on sight.

Joshua would suspect Taboo Noise, but no: normal Noise, just ten times more bloodthirsty. Shinjuku is getting more bothersome by the minute.

It takes a moment for them to work together—Joshua is back to summoning beams of light from his cellphone; Shiki apparently likes using her stuffed animal to rip the opposing side to shreds—but in the end, they sync up rather well, if Joshua is any judge. The Noise are nothing but static by the end. Joshua is half-way pleased. He’s missed this.

Shiki doesn’t look nearly so happy, however. At the end of their most recent battle, she kneels in the dust with the cat toy in her lap, staring down at it almost despondently. Joshua weighs his options, sighs, and goes to stand over her shoulder.

“Is this going to be a problem?”

“Maybe.” She opens her hands, glumly; Joshua looks down and tilts his head. “I forgot. Mr. Mew has a ripped seam. He’s fine for me to carry him, but...”

On second look... Joshua can see it. He presses his lips. “I hope you don’t expect me to do all the work,” he warns, coolly. “I hate working up a sweat, and this endeavor _was_ your idea, Shiki.”

If she’s bothered by the over-familiar use of her first name, it barely even seems to register. Then again, she did offer. “Maybe I could stitch him up?” she wonders. “But I don’t have the right thread... I was going to buy some tomorrow...”

Joshua frowns at her, but Shiki isn’t even looking at him, mumbling under her breath. After a moment, he sighs—and reaches out, picking away one of the pins she’s clipped to her cardigan. He turns it in his hands, thoughtful. “Do you have any idea how you control him?”

She glances at him, startled, then looks uncertain. “Eh...”

He giggles, and flashes the pin at her. “Groove Pawn,” he tells her. “It’s a form of psychokinesis. You didn’t know?”

“Really?” She glances at the stuffed toy in her hands. “It always felt more like Mr. Mew was just doing his own thing.”

Interesting. “Maybe so, but without you to provide guidance, it wouldn’t be nearly as effective. It could be that your familiarity with the medium creates a stronger control of it... less direct commands, and more obeying of the implied commands—what you know you need?” Joshua tugs at his hair. “Hmm. You made him, yes?”

“Mr. Mew?” She hugs the stuffed animal to her chest. “Yes. Why?”

Joshua’s getting an idea. He smiles. “And your clothes?”

“I made those too, but why...?” She trails off, eyes widening. “You think—?”

“Worth a shot, isn’t it?” 

She studies her sleeves, frowning slightly, considering. “I don’t know...”

“Try it,” Joshua cajoles. “Your pins will work here. The one nice thing about the merge between planes is that the Noise frequency isn’t needed to activate the pins. Lucky you.” Which is perhaps the only advantage they have in all this. But, regardless. 

Shiki looks uncertain, but one last glance at Mr. Mew and her jaw firms. “Okay. I’ll give it a shot.” She rises to her feet, hand outstretched, and takes a breath. “Here goes!”

Silence. Nothing happens.

Joshua spins a strand of hair between his fingers. “...Have you considered—”

Thread cuts through the air like a whistling blade. Shiki screams.

Joshua, for his part, blinks over at what _used_ to be a wall, and whistles through his teeth. “Wow,” he says, honestly impressed. “ _That’s_ going to be incredibly useful. Nice to see that you can pull your own weight after all, hm?”

Shiki doesn’t appear to be listening, but then, that’s little surprise. Her cardigan has been unraveled up to her elbow; the loose thread of the sleeve has reached long past its actual length and cut apart the air, slipping through stone like a hot knife through ice.

It’s like a net, Joshua thinks, and circles her, intrigued. It really _is_ something. If she concentrates the threads, and focuses the force onto one impact point, she could cut right through the core of a larger Noise. Even the net of thread could cut apart quite a few of the smaller Noise, too... my, he thinks. Could she _catch_ one? Fascinating.

His musing gets cut off by the loud, creaking groan of breaking stone. Shiki’s eyes go wide. Joshua looks up, startled, and steps back just in time to avoid a bit of rubble falling on his foot, as the building Shiki hit creaks, tilts, sways, and then ultimately tips back and falls apart into a burst of dust and debris.

Silence. Joshua stares. The building just behind the first, now walled off with ruin, also creaks, and then caves inward with a crash.

“Oh my god,” Shiki says, eyes wide and horrified behind her glasses. “Is that okay!?”

“…It’s fine,” Joshua says. A beat. He considers the rubble. “Well, maybe.”

There’s another pause, almost thoughtful. A wall on a third building goes loose and spills out onto the road. In the distance there is the sound of falling rocks. A small pebble rolls from the pile, taps Shiki’s shoe, and then falls sadly on its side.

Shiki covers her face.

“Useful, anyhow,” Joshua decides.

“Maybe this was a bad idea…” Shiki sighs, rubbing at her face. Then she lifts up her head— and at last seems to get a full look at her unraveled cardigan, because she blanches, and holds out her arms in horror. “Oh, no, my sleeve! I spent days on this!”

“I’m sure you can put it back.”

“Oh, you think?” She takes a breath, focusing again, and Joshua watches with interest as the thread pries loose from the rubble pile, pooling together and re-weaving back into the cardigan. Shiki peeks one eye open. “Did it work?” Pause. “It worked!”

Joshua claps for her. “Well done.”

She beams, then seems to remember who she’s smiling at and visibly falters. Joshua giggles at her. What a face! 

“Um, thanks.”

“No problem at all.”

She tucks the stuffed cat in her arms, hugging it close as if in comfort, staring down at the ground. She bites her lip, then shakes her head and exhales hard. “I… never mind. I guess we should keep moving.”

He gestures. She looks at him for a very long moment, then nods and takes the lead, walking down into a small back-alley street.

Joshua follows leisurely behind her, one hand in his pocket and the other fiddling with his phone. He tries to place another call, but isn’t surprised when it fails once again. Well, he’s glad to still have the camera, at least, though he’ll have to be careful of its use. If he could find Shinjuku’s Room of Reckoning… though unfortunately, he has no idea where the Composer of Shinjuku might be located.

Hm.

He fiddles with it some more, as they walk, and the rest of the day passes by in routine—travel, fight the Noise that converge on them, move on. Joshua gets more in-tune with this new partner, and finds to some delight that their attacks mix well. Shiki is focused, direct, and methodical, as expected of her talent as a seamstress; she attacks her enemies one hit at a time until it falls, and then moves on to the next. Matched with Joshua’s habit of just blasting a general area and catching as many Noise as possible in the light, it covers a lot of ground. He flattens the ones he can without frying his phone—and she, in turn, picks off the stragglers.

After one such battle, Joshua touches to the ground and turns to smile at her, far more genuinely than before. He can say this for Shiki Misaki— in addition to being a living wrench in the works of Joshua’s plan, she’s also just a genuinely talented Player.

“This might just work,” he tells her, cheery, and toes a line in the soft dusting of ash lining Shinjuku’s streets. “I’ll admit, I had my doubts.”

She glances back at him, looking more confused than offended. “Then... why did you agree?”

“Hm.” Joshua tilts his head. “Why indeed?”

Silence, for a moment. Shiki’s expression flattens a little. “Okay. So you’re not going to tell me.”

It’s a little cruel, maybe, but this girl’s already thrown the first stone, back in the Shibuya River; really, this should be expected. “What makes you think you _deserve_ the answer?”

His word choice is deliberate, and Shiki, of all people, sensitive enough to catch the subtext—her steps stutter, and she tugs the stuffed cat closer. “I... I didn’t mean it like that.” She eyes him again. Her fingers tighten. “You’re rude.”

He shrugs. “It’s an honest question. Really, Shiki, you haven’t changed much at all, have you?” He eyes her. “Wanting recognition is all well and good, but don’t go expecting it from _me.”_

She falters, steps stuttering in the dust. Joshua keeps walking, humming lightly. She doesn’t follow. He turns around. “We don’t have much time to waste,” he chides. “If you could, Shiki...?”

“How did you know that?” Her voice is tight. “How did you—”

“Composer,” he reminds her. “It’s my Game. I put in the entry fee requirement in the first place, you know.” Not for the reasons she probably thinks, but then, Joshua’s never claimed to teach kind lessons. “And you were Neku—my proxy’s—partner. Of course I kept an eye out.”

“Of course,” she echoes, a little hollowly. “So—so you know...”

That she is jealous? That she wants to be more than herself? That Shiki Misaki wants to be popular, and important, and at the center of it all? That she wants so much for herself she came to seethe at others who she thought stood above her?

Joshua knows a lot of things people wish he didn’t know.

“I do, yes.” He considers her, and sighs a little. She’s stepped on his toes, so to speak, but Joshua can relent where need be. “If it’s any consolation, you have changed.” Neku’s choice hadn’t been the only factor influencing Joshua’s unintended change of heart regarding Shibuya, though Joshua is never going to admit that out loud. “If this Game had an entry fee, yours would no longer be yourself.”

Green is a good color for Shiki Misaki. She’s still envious, even now. But it doesn’t fester in her anymore. She has come to learn her own strengths, started to realize her own Imagination— the value of herself. And Joshua will never, ever say it _aloud,_ but he can admire that, a little. If all the world is secret gardens, then hers is finally growing again, no longer crushed beneath her own heel.

Shiki looks down like she can’t decide whether to be happy or offended about his words. Joshua shrugs and turns away. “It would probably be that ‘friend’ of yours,” he continues knowingly, and grins, a little wry. “Or maybe Neku?” The idea of Coco’s plot getting upended by something as simple as an entry fee makes him snicker. “What a plot twist _that_ would be, hm?”

“W-what?” And then her head snaps up, eyes wide behind the lens. “Wait, oh my gosh—entry fees— I completely forgot—” She stops, and visibly rewinds the conversation in her head. “There isn’t one?”

“Thankfully.” People really aren’t meant to play the Game more than once; Joshua shudders to think how much of Shibuya would have vanished if Neku’s fee had been taken _again._ “It’s more than the RG and UG merge. Whatever Game we’re playing...”

Shiki looks stunned. “There’s no Reapers.”

“Did you just notice? Well, anyway. That’s right. No Reapers, no walls, no mission mail...” Joshua frowns a little. “I’m... a little uncertain if anyone’s in charge of this Game at all.”

“What about that Reaper girl? Coco?”

“Let me reword. No one official, at any rate.” He leaves it at that, but deep down, Joshua can’t deny he’s getting uneasy. There is too much off—too much lack. A Composer encroaching on another’s territory is a heinous crime, and bringing an illegal Player with him? Even with his powers limited by sheer virtue of being outside Shibuya, that should have warranted _some_ interaction, if nothing else. But no— instead they have been walking undisturbed, the city silent as a grave.

The Music gone.

It’s as if there is no Composer at all, Joshua thinks, but then—how is that possible? If the Composer were killed, both power and title would transfer to the killer; if the Composer were captured... well, the city still wouldn’t be like this. The power would live on and the Music continue. But this... what has happened to Shinjuku...

For once, Joshua can honestly admit he has no idea what’s going on. It’s kind of annoying.

“Either way,” Joshua says, with finality. “It’s not for you to know.” He smiles at her. “May we get moving again?”

And just like that, her hackles are back up. Sigh. “I’m just trying to be nice!” she snaps back, fierce. “Though I’m not sure you deserve it.” Her voice lowers. “You’re as bad as Neku was. We’re _partners.”_

“That’s a bit rude,” Joshua says, amused.

“Still. We made a pact. You could at least act like it. We have to work together!”

Joshua stares at her, a little disgruntled; Shiki crosses her arms and tilts up her chin and glares right back. For a moment Joshua considers pushing the issue, or perhaps ignoring her and continuing on anyway... and then, just as quickly, his annoyance fades, dull and tired. Joshua looks away first.

Shiki Misaki, Neku’s first partner in the game. Neku has learned a lot from her. And Joshua, though he is still only just able to admit this to himself, has learned from Neku in turn.

Joshua sighs heavily, the sound as loud as he can make it, and lifts a hand to his hair, tugging at the strands. “Oh, fine,” he says, only a little sullen, because he has learned _something_ from his time playing his own Game and to pretend otherwise is probably beneath him, or something. “If you _really_ want to know, I’m beginning to suspect this Game doesn’t have a Composer at all.”

Shiki looks a little stunned. Possibly she never expected him to admit anything; Joshua tries not to feel too offended about that. After all, if this were a month ago, she’d be right. (If this were a month ago, he wouldn’t have accepted her deal in the first place— but that’s not important either.) “Oh,” she says. “...Oh. Someone—someone killed Shinjuku’s Composer?”

Joshua clicks his tongue. “Not quite,” he says. “Killing the Composer wouldn’t cause an Inversion. Neither,” he adds when Shiki opens her mouth, “would kidnapping, or anything else of the like. This city has no Music. It’s silent. It is…” And this Joshua doesn’t like to admit, because the very idea is enough to make his skin crawl, but it’s the truth: “It’s as if it has no Imagination at all.”

“Um,” Shiki says. “Which is... bad?”

“You remember that storefront?” he asks her. “Yes, it’s bad. Imagination is what the entire UG runs on.”

“Oh. _Oh.”_

“Exactly.” He huffs, irritated. “Unfortunately, _whatever_ happened, I’m rather in the dark. This event has very thoroughly erased any clues left behind.”

Shiki frowns, looking thoughtful. “Is there a place for Shinjuku like there was for Shibuya? A river?”

“Of sorts. I don’t know where it is, though.” Unfortunately. Joshua likes mysteries, actually, but it’s a bit more fun when there are actual clues to follow.

“I remember the Noise around the river were pretty strong. The station underpass in general, too. Like they were just drawn there…” Shiki holds the stuffed cat in both hands, looking down at it. It’s almost as if she expects the cat to talk back to her; Joshua stifles a grin. “I wonder if we could ride on them.”

Joshua blinks. Backtracks. “On. The Noise?”

She looks a little red, but shrugs. “I mean, could we?”

He almost laughs, but then he makes the mistake of thinking about it. With the thread… and, well, Joshua understands the Noise better than anyone else, so…

There’s a long pause. Joshua looks over to the Noise, far off down the street. He thinks about it some more. And it is with great regret when he says, at last: “Mm. Better not.”

Mr. H would never let him live it down. Also, less importantly, “While stronger Noise tend to gather around the Composer’s place, it’s not exactly a homing beacon. It won’t lead us to the Composer.”

Disappointing, though.

Shiki hums, but seems to accept that, tapping her finger to her chin. “Then maybe...” She trails off, brow furrowing. “If not the Composer, we could find where it all centered? Like the Inversion? It had to _start_ somewhere, right...?”

She sounds uncertain, but Joshua straightens up. He’s not entirely sure the issue of Shinjuku’s Composer and the Inversion is so directly linked, but if one mystery can’t be solved, it stands to reason they should move on to the next. “It must have.” He tilts his head, then grins. “Ah-ha. I have an idea.”

“What is it?”

Joshua is already on his phone, flipping through the settings. When she approaches, he generously doesn’t shoo her off. “Here,” he says, and tilts the screen to her. The idea has emboldened him; his foot taps lightly on the ground. Finally, a place to start. He has no doubt they’ll run into Neku on the way there, if he gets this right. Neku usually finds himself in the center of a disaster. “A while back I had a few... adjustments made to my phone. I never did remove them. This camera can take pictures of the past.” He waves the phone at her, grinning outright now. “Pick a direction, dear.”

Behind her glasses, Shiki’s eyes are wide. She claps her hands in front of her face. “Oh! So if the Inversion started somewhere, we can see what direction it came from?”

Her excitement is rather charming. _Neku_ never got nearly as involved in the everyday mysteries as Joshua did; this response feels pretty gratifying, honestly. “Exactly! I’m impressed.”

She giggles, a little. “This is so exciting. I feel like I’m in a detective movie.” She spins on her heel, stuffed cat swinging from one hand, finger tapping her chin. She points down a random street, a once-main road turned hollow. “How about there?”

“As good a place to start as any, I suppose.” Joshua snaps the photo—he already knows the time they need, thankfully. Shiki leans over his shoulder; Joshua eyes her briefly, then sighs and lets it go. He opens the photo.

Oh, how fun. White light, the buildings crumbling, terrified people beginning to fade out... but it is vague, source-less, and impossible to tell the direction from which it’s coming from.

Shiki blinks at it, though, her eyes flicking from photo to the ruins and back again. “Oh, I know that building! Isetan department store… I went with Eri once.” She frowns a little. “Hmm. So we’re near the station?”

“Valuable info, but not quite what we were looking for… Well, two more photos left.” Joshua tilts the camera. “Choose wisely.”

“Uh... well, if we’re near the station, um, maybe the government building? Oh, where was it…” Shiki squints down a street. “There?”

Joshua snaps the photo, then sighs. Shiki frowns too. He’ll give her this much: she’d been right about the direction; he can see the tip of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building and even some of Park Tower, but beyond the vague reddish light and screaming people, nothing indicates the epicenter of the event. Tsk.

“Last one,” Shiki checks, and at Joshua’s nod, worries at her lip. “Hm...”

Joshua considers it. His finger taps against the case. After a moment, his eyes flicker up. He’s never known Shinjuku too well, even when he was alive; he’d stayed in Shibuya most of his life, and then the entirety of his afterlife. “Have you been to Shinjuku before?”

“Well... once or twice. Not as often as Shibuya. Uh, mainly around the station. Why?”

He frowns at the screen, not really seeing it. “Can you guess where the center of the city might be?”

“That’s...” She trails off. Her brow furrows. “Um. Maybe? One second.” She takes a deep breath. “Er... where’s Shibuya from here?”

This, Joshua could answer in his sleep. He is so aware of the city it nearly dizzies him; he smiles to hide the sudden tremor in his arms. Ah, it really does set in quick, doesn’t it?

“To our right,” Joshua says lightly, and cheerfully ignores the headache spiking behind his eyes.

“Okay.” She bites her lip. “Then... from there, to... and then turn left... by Golden Gai, maybe…?” She trails her eyes across the ruined landscape and finally settles for a direction slightly north-east from them. “There? I think. It’s hard to tell, with the buildings all... you know.”

“That’s good enough,” Joshua decides. He lines up the image. Then he pauses. For a moment he frowns. And then, not entirely sure why, he lifts the camera, taking in not just the street and the buildings but also the sky, high above.

He takes the shot.

His fingers tighten. His smile widens, but there’s no joy in it at all. “Bingo.”

“Yes!” She looks at the photo. Her eyes go wide. “...What?”

The photo is exactly what they need, but neither is it a welcome sight. The distant high-rise of the buildings is turning to dust and ash. People are cowering in the streets, covering their heads. A pale white light, tinged faintly bloody with red, shines out through all the streets with a piercing glow.

And high above, settled in the sky like a brand, the Reaper’s skull bears down on the city, blood red and burning bright.

“Interesting,” Joshua murmurs, and thumbs the phone off. “I believe we just got our first clue.”

Shiki bites her lip, then seems to shake herself. “We know where to start looking, now. So that’s good.” She brightens, a little. “And Neku’s sure to be there! He gets in too much trouble not to find it himself.” She’s smiling outright now, and pumps a fist to the air, triumphant, turning to Joshua with delight. “We did it!”

He giggles at her enthusiasm, and her smile falters, falling awkward and flat. Her eyes catch on his face and she seems to remember who she’s talking to for the first time. Her smile fades. Her fist lowers.

Joshua considers her, shrugs, and turns away to mess with his phone. His hands are still annoyingly shaky from earlier. He doesn’t speak. Shiki doesn’t say anything either. The silence stretches.

When it’s clear she’s not going to break, Joshua sighs again and closes his phone, looking down at the case briefly before tucking it back into his pocket. “You really don’t like me, do you?” Joshua muses, and tucks his hands in his pockets. “What stories Neku must have told you, I wonder.”

“He told me enough.” Her voice is quiet again. “But you already knew about that.” 

He hums, not really answering. Another silence. This time, Shiki looks away.

“I can’t forgive you,” she announces, apropos of nothing, eyes on her stuffed animal. She hugs it close. “Which sounds silly, doesn’t it? Considering you never did anything to me. But even if Neku does forgive you, one day, I don’t think I ever will.” Joshua keeps his eyes on the skyline, and half an eye on her; he sees her fingers tighten. “I don’t know why you did it, and even if I did, I don’t think I really care.”

Something hardens in her voice. Joshua waits, patiently, for her to finish. “Your point?” he prompts.

Her jaw clenches, and for the first time she seems truly angry with him. “You hurt Neku. You hurt him— a lot. I remember that much. He was crying. I’d never seen him cry before. You did that.” _I’m aware,_ Joshua thinks. Her eyes are fixed on the ground, now. “And you hurt him after it was over, too.”

Joshua frowns, briefly, the barest flicker of an expression, and Shiki looks up and smiles at the sight, an expression that is half-hearted and small and not very happy at all. “Yeah. I figured you didn’t know about that one. Neku doesn’t either, I don’t think. But he— he wanted to see you again, you know? No matter my feelings on it, that’s still true. Maybe he just wanted to hit you, or yell at you—um, maybe he just wanted answers?” She shrugs. “Maybe all three. But he did want to see you again. Whenever we meet up, he’s always getting distracted, looking for someone else. And I’m not stupid. I can guess.”

He has stayed silent thus far out of some amused hope of getting this out of her system; now Joshua is regretting that. There is something ashy on his tongue, settled cold in his throat. He takes a thin breath and exhales it slowly, like a test.

“You never came,” Shiki says, simply, a little harder. She’s looking at him, Joshua can tell, but he keeps his gaze turned away, fixed on the sky. “Maybe you meant that as a kindness? I don’t know. That doesn’t really matter either. Because it hurt him either way.”

Another pause. Joshua closes his eyes, opens them, and then finally looks back at her. She glares at him—not angry anymore, not really, just stubborn, stiff and holding her ground. He considers her.

“I don’t think you’re a bad person,” Shiki says, at last, reluctantly. Joshua raises an eyebrow at her. She huffs. “Which kind of makes it worse, maybe. But I don’t. Neku doesn’t either, otherwise he wouldn’t be trying so hard.” Her chin lifts, determined. “You probably aren’t sorry for what happened. You’ll probably never say it; it’s not really my business. But Neku’s trying. I don’t know why, but he is—and you know, if nothing else, _you_ could stand to try too.”

Joshua doesn’t say anything. She’s caught him off-guard with this—of all things, this is not what he was expecting her to say. And maybe that is Joshua’s fault. Hasn’t he learned this lesson already? Isn’t that why Shibuya’s still standing? They lost the Game, all of them, Neku and Shiki and the Bito siblings; they lost the game, but they had changed his mind. They had surprised him. They had changed him in turn too, even if Joshua still doesn’t quite know how to admit it.

“Just a thought,” Shiki says, hotly, and this time she’s the one to turn away. “I don’t know if you even… N-never mind. This was stupid, I told myself I wouldn’t— let’s just go.”

How silly. All of his little asides, and yet this is what riles her up. It probably shouldn’t surprise him. She’s broken into a Reaper’s Game just for the chance to help; likely Joshua should have seen this coming. It’s still annoying, though. Why has he agreed to this again?

But he doesn’t move. He feels weary, and strangely drained, and he pinches at the bridge of his nose with a quiet exhale. Hah. He could say he’s still not sure why, but then, that would be lying, wouldn’t it? And while Joshua is rather good at lying to himself, he prefers not to make a habit of it.

He thinks, once, he would have been angry at this. He’s not sure what to make of the fact he’s not. He’s not sure what to say at all, actually—and isn’t that funny? That doesn’t happen often either.

Mostly he just feels tired.

Joshua watches Shiki walk away, and lingers there, at the edge of the sidewalk. His gaze draws back, turning away toward Shibuya; he looks past the ruined buildings to the streets that are His and His alone. He taps his fingers against his thigh. _Trying,_ he thinks.

But there is no time. And so Joshua pulls his gaze away, and leaves Shibuya and his thoughts behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Joshua @his own redemption arc: ugh, morals
> 
> Writing Joshua’s POV is both very fun, and very difficult. It’s a hard balance between “know-it-all teenager with an attitude problem and an aversion to feelings” and yet also “omniscient god-like maybe-immortal.” I love him, but also. My god.
> 
> That said, Shiki and Joshua are so fun to write together. I feel like this whole fic is just my very long attempt at convincing people why Shiki and Joshua should be friends. The humor! The chaos! The broken buildings! The mystery-solving! The world would never be the same. 
> 
> Anyway, I dearly want them to interact more, TWEWY 2, please.
> 
> Current Shiki & Joshua crimes count: breaking into Shibuya River, but since Joshua deserves it Shiki gets a pass; on the other hand, those poor buildings will never be the same again. (And somewhere, in the distance, the Noise shiver, having narrowly escaped their fate.) Stay tuned for more destruction.
> 
> Next up: Rhyme!! FINALLY.
> 
> [If you want to rec this fic, you can reblog it here!!](https://izaswritings.tumblr.com/post/626000197878743040/fic-masterpost-all-thats-left-in-the-world-a) Also, if you have any questions or just want to talk, [my tumblr](http://izaswritings.tumblr.com) is always open!
> 
> I’m also on twitter as @izabellwit—come talk twewy with me!!
> 
> Any thoughts??


	6. rhyme

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rhyme has a job to do, but first they need to figure out where to start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all!! We’ve finally reached the Rhyme POV chapter!!! I’m so happy to share this one with you guys. I love Rhyme with my whole heart.
> 
> Thank you guys again for all your support and feedback!!! This week was kind of wild, so I haven’t got a chance to reply to everyone yet; I promise to respond ASAP! I love seeing what you guys think of everything!!! Your theories especially are so fun to read, and I won’t spoil anything, but some of your guesses are really on point! It’s so fun!! Thank you all so much for enjoying this story!
> 
>  **Warnings:** cursing, implied death/erasure via Inversion; mentions of gender dysphoria and a variation of body dysphoria/dissociation. Nothing very graphic, but be warned! And if there’s anything in the chapter you feel I missed, let me know and I’ll add it on here!

It’s funny, Rhyme thinks, how quickly life can change in a day.

There’s a saying about that, they’re sure of it— but it’s gone, at the moment, all the words and quips and sayings gone kind of quiet in their head. It’s hard to think positive at a time like this. Neku’s gone and Beat’s in the nightmare city (and shaking, Rhyme thinks, Beat was _shaking_ and they’ve never seen—they’ve never—

Or have they? It’s like a dream, maybe, but they can almost recall it: their brother bowed over and trembling, fingers curled tight around their pin, his eyes red. They’d hated it. They’d hated all of it. Somewhere in the Noise and non-being, something in Rhyme had seen their brother cry and wanted to scream.)

But! That’s not important right now. Rhyme has their job, and Beat has his; besides, finding Neku is probably the quickest way to making him feel better, right? So this works. Beat gets to find Neku and beat (hah) the girl that did this, and Rhyme…

Rhyme has their own job to do.

They’re still in Shibuya, for the moment, elbowing their way through the streets, trying to get through the crowd. They left Beat behind maybe thirty minutes ago, and they’ve been running ever since. They always forget—and yet, also, are always aware—of just how _big_ this city is. Shibuya is so much. There are so many people, and so many roads, and…

Patience is a virtue—Rhyme knows that better than anyone! But for the second time in the hour they find themself stalled by a crowd, and they slow, tapping their fingers in a restless beat against their leg, a tempo one-two-three. They’ve been to Mr. Hanekoma’s cafe a few times, enough to know the way by heart; they should have arrived by now. But the crowds are heavy, and all the roads on the way are full. Molco is a mess of people. Is someone having a sale?

Rhyme sighs, slumping a little. Beat could have skateboarded through; Neku shoved and Shiki slipped by… but Rhyme is too small, and some part of them is convinced they’re smaller still. A nearby stranger draws too close, and Rhyme skitters back before they can think better of it—then stops mid-retreat, makes a face, and sighs again.

They put a hand to their pocket, almost self-conscious, fingering at the pin. It’s smooth under their hands, warm. Soothing. Rhyme rubs their finger across the blank face and draws themself up tall. Okay. No crowds. Long way around it is.

Slow and steady wins the race, Rhyme reminds themself. What’s another way to the cafe… Center Street, the Scramble, then through the Department Store?

They track it in their head. It could work. They back away and turn to run.

It’s been ages since Rhyme was in a Game, since they’ve raced across a city with time ticking down around them—but this thrill is all the same, the fear and the rush of breath in their lungs helplessly familiar. Some things feel odd: the thud of their feet on the ground, the breathing, the being—but the more they run, the more settled they feel. Rhyme is still here. They are still them.

Center Street down, and turning into the Scramble—they take one look at the size of that crowd and edge around it. They keep having to rub at their arm to stay grounded. They miss Beat. It’s always easier to navigate crowds with their brother there, tall and loud and larger than life, leading the way through like there’s nothing to fear.

Without him, the crowd is crushing, and Rhyme feels small, displaced, settled wrong in their skin. Smaller than they should be. Distantly, they wonder: is this how Shiki felt, in the Game? Like her skin never fit quite right? Like every reminder of her reflection was a sickening surprise?

Rhyme is intimately aware of that feeling; Shiki is too, they know, even before that whole mess with Eri and the Game. But then… mm, well, maybe not. Shiki and Rhyme have a lot in common, especially with the gender thing, but on second thought this feeling isn’t quite the same at all. It’s more like floating away—like being elsewhere. Like the memory of being small and helpless is overlapping on this happy present, and Rhyme keeps forgetting which one they’re living through.

Rhyme bites their lip, hard, and reaches for the pin again. It’s grounding, to have it in their hand. The echoes all settle, quieter than before. They take another deep breath and push determinedly onward. Okay. Okay! They can do this.

Wildkat café, survivor, and then… something. Rhyme isn’t quite sure what they need to do when they find the girl, but that’s neither here nor there, and Rhyme puts it out of mind, slipping around the sidewalk and down towards the Department Store. After all, they haven’t even found the Shinjuku survivor yet! There’s no use getting in over their head.

Besides, all things considered, there’s probably not much Rhyme _can_ do. Maybe call Mr. Hanekoma? Hopefully the survivor is okay; Rhyme doesn’t know much first aid. Everyone always says hindsight is 20/20. Hmm, though, Rhyme might still have some chocolate in their pockets to share, if that helps at all…

Something to think about.

They round the corner, heading up Cat Street and nearing the café, and slow a bit, leaning over their knees, breathing hard. Made it. There’s the café, all boarded up and closed, and there’s the street, leading on out…

Somewhere near here, right? Though, if she’s coming from Shinjuku… that’s a lot of ground to cover. Hmm.

Rhyme rocks on their heels and beelines for a bystander. A college teen with a brown bob cut and a piercing in his ear, Jupiter of the Monkey clothes. He reminds them of Neku, a little, and for that they give him their best smile. “Hi! Sorry to bother you, but…”

“Oh, um, it’s no problem.” He tilts his head. “What’s up, kid?”

“I’m meeting a friend from Shinjuku, and she said she’d meet me around here… but I don’t really know the area. Is there a way to Shinjuku from here by the streets? I’m hoping to run into her!”

The teen blinks. His brow furrows. “Like, Akihabara? That’s a bit far, you might need…”

“What?” Rhyme frowns. “No, Shinjuku!”

“Shin…”

“The Tokyo district.” Rhyme is starting to get alarmed, now. “It’s… it’s just up north?”

He’s quiet. Then he shakes his head. “Sorry, kid, I missed that. What did you say?”

“I…” Something has gone quiet in them. Rhyme steps back. “N-never mind. Sorry. Um, thanks for your help!”

“Wait, but—”

Rhyme backs off and scatters to the streets. The teen is lost behind them. They feel unsettled, shaky—small, again. So that was… okay. Okay. Mr. Hanekoma had said something bad had happened to Shinjuku; it makes sense, given UG logic, that that means Shinjuku is now a… non-thing. It makes sense.

But still. Rhyme swallows hard. All those people… the whole city… are they just—gone? From everyone’s memories, everyone’s lives? Rhyme has an aunt in Shinjuku. If they call their mom, and ask—is their aunt still…?

They are still asking themself this, still panicking, when they turn a corner on the Shibuya city limits and see a flicker of a black wing.

Something in Rhyme’s heart goes still.

They don’t mean to stop, or stare, but for a moment it all feels just so far away. The crowds and the talking and the city—and the wings, wavering and thin as gossamer, the finest flickers in the sunlight.

And then they realize someone’s staring back.

“Oh, hey. Skulls Jr, right?” The man is tall, lanky and thin and sharp in a way that makes Rhyme tilt up their head and take notice. He has a lollipop, bright red and shiny, in one hand; beside him a smaller woman looks down at Rhyme with a sullen expression, pink hair cut short and her shirt frilling like a skirt, kept neat by a corset. “Fancy seeing you around here.”

Rhyme tilts their head further, considering; their eyes widen. Oh. Oh! “You’re Reapers, right?” they check, bobbing their head. “Beat mentioned you. How you doing?”

Pause. The two exchange glances. They look a little surprised. Why? Did they think Rhyme wouldn’t know them? Or… that Rhyme would react differently, maybe?

Oh, well. Not much Rhyme can do about the expectations of others, as the saying goes.

“We’re doing just fine.” The man spins the lollipop through his fingers, head tilted, eyes watchful. “ _You_ sure seem in a hurry, though. Got somewhere to be?”

Hm.

Rhyme stops. They link their hands behind their back and look the two up and down, the man with his lazy grin and the woman with her narrow stare. They think about it. The stories their brother and Neku cobbled together—Kariya and Uzuki, right? —and who these two are and the things they did. They erased Rhyme, that first week. They tried to help Beat and Neku, sort of, in the last one. They tried to keep their word.

“Um, hello?” The woman—Uzuki, probably, definitely, right? —is saying, fingers snapping in front of Rhyme’s face. Rhyme blinks at her. Nods. Makes a choice.

“Neku got shot,” they say, seriously, and take note of the way both of the Reapers go still. Good reaction? Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. “A Reaper called Coco. Do you know her?”

“What!” Uzuki says, but it’s Kariya who Rhyme watches—he’s paused, recalibrated, and now he’s watching Rhyme back with sharp eyes.

“Coco, huh?” He sticks the lollypop in his mouth and shrugs. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

Hmmmm. Rhyme sighs. “I don’t really know much beyond that. Sorry!”

“Oh?” His head tilts. “So what _are_ you doing?”

“Trying to find the survivor of Shinjuku,” Rhyme explains, and when they both go stiff, blinks. “Oh. You didn’t know?”

“Survivor?” Kariya hisses, the first visible reaction that feels genuine. Uzuki’s eyes are wide. “What happened to Shinjuku?”

“That shockwave,” Uzuki mutters, from beside him. “Kariya, you don’t think…!”

“It happened only a bit ago,” Rhyme explains, watching them. “Um, well, I don’t know what happened, but… the person I’m trying to find, I think she’s involved. She’s somewhere between the Cat Street area and Shinjuku, but…” They trail off, gauging the looks on Kariya and Uzuki’s faces, and slump. “You don’t know anything, huh.”

“Sorry, kid. This is the first we’ve heard of it.” Kariya shakes his head. “Shinjuku. Shit. It’s gone?”

“Um, that’s what it sounded like, anyway.” Rhyme tilts their head. That teenager on the street, the way the words had just slid off him, like Shinjuku itself—its name, its reality—was being rejected by all the world. “I think it’s because of this thing called ‘Inversion?’”

Rhyme looks up. Uzuki is frowning, but Kariya has gone pale. “Oh. Is it that bad?”

“What?” Uzuki’s eyes snap to the side and then narrow. “Kariya?”

“…It’s impossible. It shouldn’t be—” He cuts himself off. “You’re sure?”

“Mm, pretty sure.” Rhyme bobs their head. “Why, what is it?”

“Bad news.” He bites at the lollypop stem and then shakes his head, laughing quietly. “ _Very_ bad news.”

Uzuki looks peeved. “Are you going to give an actual answer or just keep being cryptic?”

“Slow down, Uzuki. This isn’t exactly easy info. Pretty sure it’s classified six ways to Sunday, but hey, if it’s already happening…” He sighs, and when he speaks again, he’s addressing Rhyme directly. “It’s a distortion in the rules of the world. Something’s unbalanced the whole system and sent it crashing down. The city, everything it stands for, everyone who lives and breathes and beats with it…” His lips thin. He snaps his fingers.

“…the _fuck?”_ Uzuki says, sounding stunned.

Rhyme stares off into the direction of the city, feeling hollowed. “That’s awful,” they whisper. “What could do something like that?”

“Inversions usually start in the UG. My guess is whatever happened, it started there. Then it just started bleeding over to everywhere else.”

Rhyme frowns a little at that. “In the UG… I wonder what it was.” It must have been big, to unstable the whole city. It must have been terrible. They wonder if Coco had a hand in that, too. It’s a little uncharitable to think, but…

Neku.

As Rhyme sits in silence, Kariya and Uzuki exchange looks. Uzuki grips her hair. “The hell is happening?” she says in a fierce whisper. “First the Games last month… and now this!? Argh, the brass never tells us anything!”

“Oh, I think that’s because the Composer left,” Rhyme admits, and watches with mild alarm when they both choke. “Are you okay?”

“The fuck do you mean, the Composer _left?”_ Uzuki snaps, and then a weird look crosses her face. Her expression darkens. “And how do _you_ know about it!? You aren’t even part of the UG! Ugh, this is a disgrace!”

Rhyme flaps a hand at them. “Sorry! I’m sure it’s not that… just, Mr. Hanekoma mentioned he couldn’t leave the city because Joshua’s gone, so I thought…” They trail off again. The words don’t seem to be computing. Rhyme pauses. “Um.”

Kariya has his hand up. “Are you saying—you know who the Composer _is?_ His RG form?”

Uzuki looks like she might be dying inside. Rhyme feels kind of bad for them. It is a bad look, huh? “Eh… well… I think he tried to get Neku to shoot him. And Neku didn’t. And then told us. I, I haven’t met him personally, though…” They scratch at their cheek. “Sorry.”

“Phones did— nope, never mind, don’t want to know.” Kariya slashes his hand through the air. “Not important right now. The Composer’s gone?”

“A lot’s happening.” Rhyme considers them, then nods. “I’m looking for the Shinjuku survivor. Beat, he’s looking for this Reaper girl, Coco…” They chew on their lip. “Are you sure you don’t know anything about her?”

Uzuki and Kariya exchange looks again. “Later,” Kariya says, and at Uzuki’s nod, turns back to Rhyme. “No, but we can find out. Coco, was it? Leave it to us.”

Rhyme smiles. “Thanks!” They think about it. “Um, if you want to know more, though… Mr. Hanekoma, he runs the Wildkat café on this street. He’s not there right now, but maybe later? And he knows more about what’s going on than I do.” Rhyme offers the two Reapers a smile. “He’s trying to keep Shibuya safe too. He might know a place you can start.”

“More names I don’t know, hmm?” But Kariya is grinning. “Well. Better informed late than never, I guess. Sure, we’ll stick around. Might as well get some foot in the door here, given the stakes.”

“Ugh.” Uzuki looks away. “Honestly. Why are Reapers always the last to know?” She eyes Rhyme. “But I guess we know now.”

“What she means to say is, thanks for the info.”

“Like hell I did! Thanking even a _former_ Player—ugh.”

Rhyme giggles, unable to help it. There’s so much character to them, it’s rather funny. It’s hard to believe these people erased Rhyme.

Maybe Rhyme should invite them along—ask for these Reapers’ help, their protection and their powers. But the fact remains they _did_ erase Rhyme, and also if Beat found out he would freak, and… and its better this way, Rhyme thinks. They aren’t one to hold grudges. But though Rhyme might believe in forgetting the past, that’s not the same as forgiving it, is it?

This is okay. This is just fine.

So Rhyme nods at them one last time and turns away, ready to keep going. There’s no time to waste on pleasantries, so they don’t bother—but when Kariya holds out his hand, a twinge of power beckons, and bids them to stop. Reluctantly, Rhyme looks back.

He tilts his head at them, something knowing lingering wry in the curl of his lips. “Hey, Skulls Jr. One last thing.” He pauses. Rhyme waits. “Your eyes keep flickering. I don’t suppose you’re looking at our wings?”

Rhyme hesitates. “Is… is that a bad thing?”

Uzuki is still. But Kariya smiles. “…No.” His hand draws back, tosses forward—something glints in the air, and Rhyme catches it without thinking. Then they blink. “Just double-checking. Hey, it might be useless for you, but if not…” He shrugs. “Put it to good use, yeah?”

Rhyme studies it. It’s a pin—bright gold, with a skull and serrated edge like a key. “What is it?”

“A Keypin. Highest level, too. If you can see the wings, still… who knows if there’s walls about out there, but just in case, this baby should get you through.” He grins at Rhyme’s cautious look. “I like to cover all my bases. This survivor is important, right? Then it’s in my best interest that you find her.” He raises an eyebrow. “Just, ah… keep this loan on the down-low, you hear?”

Rhyme considers him. Then they smile back. “Sure, no problem.”

They tuck it away in their pocket, rocking on their heels, watching the city. The crowds, the murmur, the sunlight bright in the air. But it feels stranger, now. Like even Shibuya is starting to hold its breath.

Rhyme watches the sky for a long moment. It remains blank and blue. They smile, relieved and not sure why, and turn away, back to the road ahead. “Goodbye,” they call back. “And good luck!”

Kariya waves. Uzuki calls out, “Don’t die again, brat.”

It’s a rude thing to say, probably, but something about it makes Rhyme laugh, instead. Their heart feels a little lighter. They smile at the Reapers one last time, and then take off towards Shinjuku.

And for a moment—for an instant—in the echo of their footfalls and the rasp of their breaths—there is a ripple in the air. As they slip away from Cat Street into the unknown, Rhyme closes their eyes and hears a distant call, distorted and thin.

**_Pleas — hel — me—_ **

“I’m coming,” Rhyme promises between breaths. “I’m coming for you. I promise!”

And they run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alt chapter summary: Rhyme nearly drives three random people to tears without even trying. How impressive is that??
> 
> Also, you KNOW shit’s gone down when even Rhyme doesn’t have a fun saying to make sense of all this. That’s a warning sign of the apocalypse right there. Shibuya beware.
> 
> Random teen who got accosted by Rhyme on the street is actually the JM shopkeeper dude! I like to imagine he commutes to work in Shibuya, and lives in Shinjuku with his three sisters. His connection to Shibuya saved him, but his head is kind of a mess right now. Poor kid. (Not seen: he stands on the corner ages after Rhyme leaves, staring off into the distance where Shinjuku used to be, struggling to remember. He never does.)
> 
> I like to imagine there’s another kind of tragedy called “Reversion,” which is when the world-destroying distortion starts in the RG. Mayhaps Megumi’s plan was headed in that direction…? Who can say.
> 
> Next up: Pact! In which night falls and midnight conversations are had by all. I didn’t call this arc “bonding” for nothing, you know.
> 
> Also! I’m going to have to scale back on weekly updates, since uni is restarting this week. New schedule is aiming for a chapter every two weeks! I’ll still be posting on Sundays, though. See you guys on the 13th!
> 
> [If you want to rec this fic, you can reblog it here!!](https://izaswritings.tumblr.com/post/626000197878743040/fic-masterpost-all-thats-left-in-the-world-a) Also, if you have any questions or just want to talk, [my tumblr](http://izaswritings.tumblr.com) is always open! 
> 
> I’m also on twitter as @izabellwit—come talk twewy with me!!
> 
> Any thoughts?


	7. pact

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sho and Neku actually try to talk to each other, with various results; Eri and Beat face the unknown, and Shiki and Joshua play 1AM emotional ping-pong, because let’s be honest, it's been a long day for both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Happy Sunday! I hope you all had a good week. Also, thank you so much for all of your wonderful comments!! It really made me happy! 
> 
> This chapter is a bit of a doozy. I think it’s the longest one in the fic so far?? Either way, I hope it’s worth the wait! After this chapter, we’re finally getting into the big stuff. I’m so excited!
> 
>  **Warnings:** cursing, referenced character death via Neku’s situation/Reaper’s game, implied death/erasure via Inversion, and mentions of blood and bodily harm, though nothing graphic. If there’s anything in the chapter you feel I missed, let me know and I’ll add it on here!

The sun sets.

Neku stands at the end of the street and watches, narrow-eyed, as the distant blur of light sinks below the jagged edge of the ruined city skyline. It doesn’t look quite right—because of course it doesn’t, this is a nightmare city and everything about it feels designed to be as uncanny valley as possible. He’s pretty sure it’s a sunset, though. The sky has stained a bloody red; the shadows are stretching long and thin by his feet. The cloud of dust and smog lingering in the air like a false fog has turned red too— the whole world cast in some awful, ugly light. 

They’re on the edge of the city, in a residential area. The fruition of a full day of traveling through these ruined streets. It only took a couple of hours, but they’ve finally hit the end of it, the border of this twisted Game. They can’t go any further beyond this point.

There’s definitely a wall— Neku checked, and his hand still smarts from the burn—but like everything else, it’s not something he’s familiar with. The walls in the first Reaper’s Game had been clear and crystalline; this one is like blurry glass. If he squints, he can _almost_ see through it: the suggestion of buildings, people and places alive and whole… but the way is smeared with an ashy fog. It’s as if this city has been surrounded by a great wall of mist, cutting them off from the rest of the world.

There’s no getting through _that_ thing, Neku thinks. Not without a high-level keypin, and even then, he’s not sure even that could break it. There’s something very final about this wall. Escape isn’t an option.

Argh, he can’t even figure out where they _are_. Those distant buildings could be Shibuya or even the other half of Tokyo, and hey! Neku wouldn’t have a damn clue. It’s not like this place has been any help. Any identifying buildings have been dusted; Neku is totally lost.

Either way, the wall isn’t coming down anytime soon. It’s useless to stay here any longer, but…

Neku grimaces, and shoves a hand back through his hair, eyeing his new partner warily. Minamimoto doesn’t seem keen on leaving; he isn’t paying any attention to Neku at all, focus entirely caught on… something.

It’s probably a tower of trash. It looks like one of his towers of trash? When they’d arrived here only twenty minutes ago, there’d been some hollow shells of cars, and weird debris littered on the ground, and the Grim Heaper had taken one look at it and grinned like a shark. Then he’d started stacking it. Neku is kind of, a little, annoyed at that. He’s also not planning on complaining. Finally, a moment to breathe.

The tower taking shape behind him, Neku watches the blood-stained air for a few minutes more, then sighs and turns away.

“We’re not blacking out,” he says, aloud. “I think we’re here for the night.” Which, go figure. The one thing that might be nice about the Game—skipping the inconveniences of shelter in an apocalyptic city—is the one thing he’s _not_ getting. “Hey, are you listening? We should probably find somewhere to lay low.”

Minamimoto doesn’t answer. He seems intent on the tower. Neku shakes his head and moves away from the wall. Whatever. He’ll find a place himself. It’s not like they’re going to be able to go far. The sun’s setting, so… he has maybe twenty minutes before it goes totally dark.

Neku heads for one of the buildings. Sure, it’s an empty shell and looks like it might topple at a stiff breeze, but it hasn’t fallen yet all day, right? So if they’re careful, and don’t get ambushed by Noise while inside…

It’s probably fine.

It takes him a couple tries to find a room untouched. Neku gets lucky on floor number two—it used to be an apartment, probably, a small one-room place with a skeleton kitchen, whited out and hollowed and scraped clean. But there’s a bleached futon in the corner and an ashy rug on the floor and hey, it’s better than nothing, right?

He pries open the dusty window and leans out. The tower is almost completed—he’s guessing, but he’s seen enough of them to tell. “Hey,” he says.

A long pause. Minamimoto doesn’t look like he’s listening, and Neku nearly closes the window on him—let him sleep wherever then, like Neku gives a damn—but at the last moment he looks up, and his brow briefly furrows. “What, yoctogram?”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to travel when it gets dark.” Cloud cover means no moon or stars; ruined city means no streetlamps… it’d be like the A-East mission from hell. Neku isn’t dealing with that shit, thanks. “The room has a rug. You can use it if you want.” Because hell yes is Neku taking that futon.

Minamimoto snorts and turns away, back to fussing with the trash. Neku hisses through his teeth, and slams the window shut. Whatever. He threw the dang olive branch; Neku’s work here is done. He’s tired. It’s been a long day, and all he wants to do is sleep.

He misses Shibuya.

He flops down on the futon and closes his eyes, and tries not to think of Shiki, or Beat, or even Joshua. He tries not to imagine what it would be like to be playing this Game with them, instead. What they would do. What they are doing now.

Shiki, he thinks—Shiki would hate this place. So devoid of color, and life, and just… anything Shiki’s ever loved. She’d despise it. Joshua too, he supposes. The lack of individuality—the lack of Music… they’re similar, in that way. It’s a weird thought, but it settles like a true thing: Joshua and Shiki would hate this place for the same reasons.

Beat… Beat wouldn’t have an opinion. He’d accept it, he’d move on, he’d adapt. He would want to keep searching after dark, maybe. He’d throw up a fist and declare there’s nothing that can stop them, not even the night. Neku would have to convince him otherwise.

He smiles at the thought. But it aches, too, somewhere deep in his chest. Neku squeezes his eyes shut. Stupid. _And here I was, saying I wasn’t going to think about it._

They’ll be okay. Beat has Rhyme, and vice versa; they’re probably fine. Shiki has Eri. Joshua… well. Joshua.

Neku will be okay too. He doesn’t want to do this alone, but he can.

He can.

There’s a creak on the staircase; Neku opens his eyes and reaches for his pins, eyeing the door warily. It feels almost surreal to see Minamimoto walk in. Taboo-ified Reaper, grinning like a ghoul, slick backed wild hair and dust on his clothes, entering an apartment. It doesn’t fit his image. He doesn’t seem like the kind of person to use a door.

Minamimoto clicks his tongue when he sees the room, but all he says is, “Not bad, for a baseless binomial,” and then head for the far wall.

“You’re welcome,” Neku replies, sarcastic, and closes his eyes again, this time against the headache pounding behind his temple.

He hears Minamimoto settle by the wall, yawning loudly. There’s a beat of silence. Neku opens his eyes. “…Did you see anything past the wall?”

A scoff. “No.”

Yeah, he’d figured not. Worth a shot though. Neku rolls to his back and tucks his hands under his neck, staring up at the ceiling. “We’re not getting out,” he mutters, resigned. “We’ll have to… figure out what we can do here, I guess.”

Another bored noise. No response.

“Any suggestions?” Neku says, pointedly.

“You are zetta talkative today,” Minamimoto suggests back.

“I like having an idea of where to go.” And he’s partners with this guy whether he wants it or not. He doesn’t like it. He’s not sure he’ll ever like it. But Neku can at least make the effort.

“Tch, garbage,” Minamimoto says, sounding vaguely amused. “There’s no guidelines to this problem, _Player._ Different parameters. Different rules. Adjust or get deleted.”

“What are you—”

“Some numbers seem set on certain equations,” Minamimoto says, like it’s an insult. “Just because _you_ miss the old Game doesn’t mean we can’t configure this one. You’ve got to conform to the equation, constant! Can’t force a formula that doesn’t make sense.”

Neku stills, feeling struck. “That’s— that’s not—” He sits up fast, fingers curling. His teeth grit. That’s not true. It’s _not._ Neku doesn’t belong in the Game, and he’s not having trouble adjusting, and he doesn’t miss it, he’s just—

But his mind is stuck on it—that moment fighting the Noise, the power singing through him, and Neku bites hard on the inside of his cheek and glares daggers at the walls.

“I _am_ adjusting,” he says tightly. “If you would just—” No, no, that won’t work. They’ve already been through this. Neku takes another breath, and switches tracks. “Hey.”

A loud sigh. “ _What?”_

“That thing you mentioned earlier, with— that guy.” Neku stares at the wall. “What’s Inversion?”

“Do the math.”

 _Asshole._ “Look, I just want to know what’s going on.”

“It’s easy addition,” Minamimoto says, sort of scornfully. “Look around, yoctogram! The proof is all around you. The frequencies have been made null; it’s all broken equations now. That’s Inversion. When the math holding everything together breaks down.”

Neku frowns, trying to piece it together. “So the UG and RG…”

“It’s all fallen to zero. Ugh! Useless radian. 2 + 2 = 4. So zetta _simple_.”

Neku resists the urge to roll his eyes. He got an answer, at least. That’s something, isn’t it? It’s definitely more than he got earlier, even if it still doesn’t make complete sense to him.

 _My standards are dropping to the negatives,_ Neku thinks to himself, and then is a little horrified at his own almost-math joke. Cool, erasing _that_ from his memory forever.

Still, if he’s understanding Minamimoto right, then… what, all the planes, UG and RG both, have just— crashed down on top of each other? That’s…

Neku leans back against the wall, hushed. His fingers curl into his arm. “This doesn’t make any sense,” he says quietly, half to himself. “How did this happen? This place…”

“Shinjuku.”

“What?” He turns around. “How the hell do you know that?”

Minamimoto scoffs at him. “More easy math. Didn’t you see the Gov building?”

“Wha—everything here is _destroyed,”_ Neku snaps back, but his mind is whirling. Shinjuku. Damn it all, that fits too. Somewhere outside of Shibuya, where Coco was trying to lead them to… “Wait a minute. Shinjuku was fine this morning!”

Minamimoto yawns, looking bored again. “That was this morning.”

So, what—it just became a wasteland _today?_ Neku leans back, stunned. Holy shit. Even Shades’ attempt at mind-controlling Shibuya had taken at least three weeks to set in. This is… he can hardly grasp it.

“How did this _happen_?” he says, honestly horrified now, and this time the silence stretches long. Neku looks over. He half expects Minamimoto to be asleep, but in the very last echoes of light Neku can see his eyes, staring out the window. Minamimoto is frowning. That sharp smile is nowhere in sight. And there is a furrow between his brows that seems, for a moment, almost troubled.

Neku waits. At last, Minamimoto looks away from the window, and stares down at the floor. He doesn’t meet Neku’s eyes.

“I don’t know.”

He sure doesn’t sound happy to admit it, either. Neku looks away, and leans back against the futon, quiet once more.

“…Hey, binomial. Speaking of half-finished equations.”

Neku stares at the ceiling, and then turns his head, eyeing Minamimoto warily. “…What?”

“You keep losing track of the numbers,” Minamimoto says, and his eyes glint. “Zetta often, too.”

Neku considers him, parsing through that—realizes what he means, and stills, shoulders stiffening. The visions. The voice echoing through his head. He’d known Minamimoto had noticed, but…

“Didn’t think you gave a digit,” Neku says finally, dryly, and Minamimoto actually laughs, a sharp and bright sound that echoes a little in the empty air. It seems bizarrely genuine.

“I zetta don’t,” he says, grinning outright now. “But I despise working with incorrect formulas.” His smile widens. “Spell it out.”

Neku rolls his eyes, a second away from turning around and ignoring him outright, but just as he is opening his mouth to tell Minamimoto to shove it, common sense and memory rears its head. The echo of another partnership, weeks ago, the memories Neku didn’t have and how he kept quiet, kept it silent, all the way to the end of Day Two. How different things might have gone, if he’d just trusted Shiki sooner.

Neku closes his mouth. He makes a face. He thinks of Shiki, and sighs, and sits up properly on the futon, resting his elbow on his knee. “It’s…” He doesn’t even know where to begin. It feels ridiculous, to think this all started only a day ago. “There’s this voice… this girl, I think. I can hear her sometimes.”

Minamimoto looks blank. “Well,” he says. “That’s zetta fucking useless.”

Neku scowls at him. “I don’t mean… ugh, I don’t even know what _you_ think I mean. But it’s not that. It’s like… she’s right there with me. I’ve never met her. I don’t know her—” He thinks of that flicker of a person, Shiki’s stitched pig in her hands, and swallows. “At least, I don’t think I do? But I can hear her, sometimes. As if she’s far away, and right there with me, all at the same time.”

Minamimoto seems bored, already distracted; Neku ignores him, lost in thought now. The more he speaks of it, the stranger it seems. “I think she’s from here. Maybe. She talks about… being lonely. And emptiness.” He feels a little ill. Static crackles in his ears like a scream. “She seems… really afraid.”

Whispers echo in his head. Neku looks down at his hands, and admits, “She hates the silence most of all.”

Minamimoto stills a little, at that. He doesn’t say anything for a long moment, and in the end he looks away, his eyes dark. They sit there together in the quiet. Neku keeps his eyes on his hands. Minamimoto stares out the window again, gaze distant, as if looking at nothing at all.

At last, he says, almost muttering it: “A null set of numbers. Absolute zero.”

Neku is too tired to think it through. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Minamimoto grimaces. He tears his eyes away from the window, and tilts back his head, looking up at the ceiling, avoiding Neku’s gaze. “…It zetta sucks.”

Neku pauses. Somehow it has never occurred to him that Minamimoto might miss the music of the city too; that this unnatural silence would unnerve him, or ache in him as it does with Neku. He turns his eyes away. He feels, for once, more tired than annoyed.

“Yeah,” Neku agrees, quietly. The silence. The twisted streets. The echo, her voice still resounding in his head— _please, please, help me._ It’s too much. It’s too quiet.

Absolute zero.

“It really does,” Neku says, and closes his eyes.

.

“I can’t _believe_ you wanted to keep exploring in the dark!”

It’s long past evening, the sun set and the red faded from the horizon, and this isn’t the first time Eri has said this. Crouched down in a corner of their little shelter, the flashlight glow casting twisting shadows over everything, Beat sighs heavily and kicks hard at his skateboard, rolling it across the floor.

It’s not a big shelter; his board hits the wall and bounces back, and he catches it under his foot, rolling it beneath his heel. Then he kicks it towards the wall again, because damn, what else is he supposed to do?

“I still think we shoulda gone,” he mutters, glum. “We’re wastin’ daylight!”

“It’s pitch dark,” Eri hisses back, sounding exasperated.

“We’ve got a light.”

“One dumb flashlight against the city of dark and doom,” Eri mutters, and sinks against the wall. “No. No. I am not going out—there—when those things are—”

She fumbles, inhaling sharply, fingers clenched to fists by her sides. Beat winces at the memory—man, the lungs on her. His ears are _still_ ringing. Though he can’t really blame her. First time Beat saw the Noise, he just about jumped out of his skin.

“Psh,” Beat says now, and waves it off. “The Noise won’t hurt us. We have those pins, remember?”

Eri thins her lips, looking about ready to argue—then slumps. “I still don’t get how that works,” she mutters, and Beat shrugs. He’s not going to be the one to explain it. “Well, still. It’s not a good idea.”

Beat grimaces, but lays off, kicking at the skateboard again. It grates at him, but hey, it’s Eri’s choice. She’s the one really panicking here, especially with Shiki… well.

And while it gnaws at him, while sitting still and waiting a whole eight hours for sunrise itches under his skin, deep down Beat has to admit she’s right. Neku would say the same, probably. _What are you doing? Come on, use your head._ Beat can almost hear him. It sort of aches.

So he doesn’t say anything. It’s not all bad, either; they’ve got this neatass little shelter in some empty hollow of a café stand, which, score! But it grates, even so. Man, they’ve barely even started! It took longer than Beat would have liked to get to Shinjuku by foot—unavoidable, given no trains were going through there anymore, some freaky UG power thing—and by the time they’d arrived, they’d only had about an hour before the sun started going down and Eri panicked.

At least they didn’t leave. Eri was thinking it; man, Beat could just see those wheels in her head turning. But she hadn’t said it, and he’s grateful for it. His parents will worry— are worrying, probably—but if Beat doesn’t answer his phone it's for good reason, and he’ll apologize later. He just… he doesn’t want to leave. It took them this long just to get here, and… well, spending the night in a ruin isn’t the best thing ever. But it would be worse, Beat thinks, to leave.

They’ve made it. They’re here. Now Beat just has to wait until the sun comes up, and then…

_Soon, Phones. Shiki. We’re on our way._

Still. He feels jittery. His limbs are all wound tight with a phantom pain; Beat grimaces, and digs his palm into his thigh, rubbing above his knee. Aw, hell. He should have guessed this would happen. It’s been happening on and off ever since the car accident-that-never-was, and it’s been building to a bad day for a while now, too. Of course it's kicking his ass the moment he stops moving.

He leans against the wall, sighing, still rubbing at his leg. It’s seized up something terrible, stabbing pain like his bones are breaking, but with luck it’ll have eased off by morning.

Well, Beat thinks. Maybe it will. This shelter isn’t all that comfortable, and they’re going to wake up with a lot of aches tomorrow. Shit, he might even feel worse. But then, that’s okay. Hell, compared to his situation in the final week, this is downright cozy. What’s he got to worry about this week, besides the phantom aches? Threat of being eaten by Noise? Psh, done that. Beat’s chilling.

No more time limit on his life; Hanekoma promised to help look after Rhyme; and Beat isn’t even facing this dark alone. Eri’s here! Which, granted, he doesn’t know her all that well (or, uh, at all), and the girl doesn’t seem too fond of their group anyhow… but that’s fine too. It’s nice just having company.

Eri doesn’t look like she’s really appreciating it though. This whole time she’s been as jittery as Beat feels, pacing and sitting down and standing soon after. She taps her foot like she’s itching under her skin. Her hands fiddle with her skirt and her hat. More recently she’s started messing with the brass knuckles sitting heavy on her hand; she slides it off, slides it on, makes a fist and then repeats. Beat’s getting tired just watching her.

He considers her, and kicks his board again; this time when it rolls back he keeps it still under his heel. Eri doesn’t even notice. Her eyes are glazed, off in her own world. She’s gnawing her lip to shreds.

“Shiki’ll be okay, yo,” Beat says, out of nowhere, taking a shot in the dark. Eri jolts and then stills. “She’s badass, you know? Whatever plan she’s got, it’s probably a good one.”

“Badass,” Eri mutters, and then sighs, shoulders falling. She sits against the wall, drawing up her legs. The flashlight casts odd shadows; a quiet circle of yellow light on the ceiling and a soft glow all around them, barely reaching into the corner of the room. When Eri bows her head, it makes it hard to see her eyes. “How do you know?”

“Huh? Well, uh…”

“I’ve been meaning to ask. The Game, the Reapers, the… everything. All of it. You and—that coffee guy, I got the gist of that, I think, but…” Her hands tighten on her knees. “How did you meet Shiki? _Really_ meet her, I mean. Not that stupid lie she probably told me.”

Beat scratches his head. “Er, that’s… uh, Shiki’ll probably wanna—”

“Shiki’s not answering her phone,” Eri says, a little coolly. Beat winces. Her fingers are white-knuckled around her knees. “I—look, I just—I just—”

There’s something about the look on her face that makes Beat look away. He makes a face at the wall and then sighs, pushing his beanie up away from his eyes. “Sure, yo,” he says quietly. “I can tell you. But it’s not— It’s…” He sighs. “It’s real complicated, yo.”

Eri doesn’t move. Beat shrugs, and goes back to kneading at his tense leg. “I met Shiki the same time I met Phones,” he says. He’s unsure of how to say it—even more unsure of how to break the news gently—so he goes all in. “First week of the Game, about… man, I dunno. Two months ago, maybe? It’s been a while, yo, my memory isn’t that good.”

Eri swallows. “I knew it,” she mutters. “She was—she was in the Game?”

“…Yeah.”

“She didn’t tell me,” Eri murmurs, quieter now. Beat shifts, uncomfortable, and winces when his leg jars; he gets the feeling Eri’s not really talking to him at all. “That w-whole month, I remember, she was avoiding me, she never answered… why didn’t she tell me? If she called—I could have—”

“Our phones didn’t work,” Beat explains, eager to help, but then he pauses. There’s something in Eri’s words that strike him as off, but he can’t pinpoint it, and something about Eri’s expression makes him wary of pushing. It’s probably fine, anyway. “And Shiki…”

He cuts himself off. “…Never mind.” That’s not his story to tell, and… Beat is pretty sure that’s one thing Shiki never wants Eri to know. Entry fees have always sucked ass, but Shiki’s especially…

“I always thought it was weird.” Eri’s voice is quiet, a little bitter; Beat blinks at her, feeling strangely out of his depth. “You guys just came out of the blue, and all her stories of how you guys met in class, it didn’t… and Neku, especially, it was like—” She stops again. Her head lowers.

“Oh, yeah.” Beat tilts his head back. “Phones and Shiki were partners.”

Eri looks up. “Um…” Pause. “I don’t really know what that means.”

“Oh, uh… like…” Beat gestures. “Like me and Phones, or even me and Rhyme, y’know? You’ve gotta trust your partner! With the fighting, and with the talking, worries and everything. Sharing the burden and stuff. It’s like a, a…” There’s a word for it, he knows—p-something—but the details are escaping him. “A promise! Yeah, like that.”

Eri presses her lips. “A promise.”

“Exactly!”

“…I don’t really get it, but okay.” She looks away, towards the darkened window, and a strange smile pulls at her lips. “Haha. This is, like, so weird. You know? Everything about this really is…” Her lips press. She ducks her head down behind her knees.

Beat looks away too. The flashlight flicker, the quiet roll of the skateboard wheels over the ground; the silence, deafening, right outside the walls. He closes his eyes and thinks about Rhyme, where they are or how they’re doing; tries even harder _not_ to think about Phones. Sees the blood behind his eyelids. Hears the bang like an echo, ringing in his ears like the shriek of tires against the road, the dull thud before the end.

And all he says is, “We’ll find ‘em.”

Eri lifts her head. “Yeah,” she says. Her voice is hoarse. “We will.”

.

Sitting at the booth of what was probably a restaurant, once, before the Inversion, Shiki looks outside the windows and exhales, her breath fogging the glass. “Wow,” she says. “It’s gotten really dark.”

The restaurant is a small, ruined place; empty booths and empty shelves and windows blank and sheer. It’s creepy in the same way the whole city is, except maybe worse, because there’s enough definition left to recognize it as a restaurant—and so much missing it’s impossible not to notice how it’s been changed. At least the booth seats are soft.

It’s like living an apocalypse novel, Shiki thinks, and scrunches her face at the table. On the one minor bright side, at least she doesn’t need to eat? Though she’s not sure how that works, either. She’s still alive, just in the Game, so…

It’s too late at night to think about that, so instead Shiki closes her eyes and rests her head back against the seat. It really is dark. The only light is this strange, ghostly kind of glowing sphere Joshua summoned and then threw up above them maybe two hours ago; it’s as dim as a nightlight, and flickers like it has bad connection. It helps, a little, but… Shiki’s never liked nighttime, and here, with no moon or stars or anything, it’s almost worse.

Joshua is seated across from her, his hand resting on his cheek and one finger drawing patterns in the dust on the windows. Where Shiki watches the light, he turns and smiles at the shadows. “Surprising, isn’t it?” he says to her, almost light. “No end to the days at all. A full twenty-four hours… this Game really is something new.”

Shiki presses her lips, ill at ease with it. She fiddles with the end of her skirt, the soft fabric woven tight and warm, the cloth soothing beneath her restless fingertips. “I don’t get it,” she admits, and smooths her skirt flat, a nervous habit. “Why the long days? This doesn’t feel like the Game at all.”

“Hm. Who knows?” Joshua tilts his head. In the reflection of the glass, his eyes seem blurry and dim. “To disorient us? To tire us? Sleeping in a ruined city really will do murder on your back.” He snickers, then, as if he’s said something funny. Shiki frowns a little. “Awful, don’t you think? For former Players especially. All that time, waiting for the next day to begin… waiting for the blackout…”

“Oh.” Shiki’s fingers curl. “So this, too…”

“No missions,” Joshua murmurs. “No Reapers. No walls. Just… waiting. Until the end.”

There is something terribly cruel about it that Shiki doesn’t know how to put into words. She shivers, and says nothing.

“Yes,” Joshua replies, as if she’s spoken. “My thoughts exactly.” He sighs and leans back against his seat. “Either way, it’s working. Even _I_ don’t really know what to expect from all this.” His eyes narrow, a little. He drags his finger through the dust on the window, a bold and stark line across the glass. “It’s getting a bit annoying.”

Shiki bites the inside of her cheek and looks away, picking up Mr. Mew just to have something in her hands. She smooths her fingers down his stitching and wishes for better thread. She has her needle, spare strands—of course she does, she always does—but for Mr. Mew, she needs better. It’s why she’s fighting with her clothes in the first place.

Still. Her fingers itch to fix something.

Joshua giggles. Shiki looks up, startled. He’s smiling at her again, small and smirking. “Bored?”

“N-no…” Bored, in a place like this? Discouraged, more like. She can’t understand how he can sit there, laughing like nothing is wrong; it’s like the whole awful situation has barely touched him at all. “Aren’t you worried?”

He tilts his head, looking bemused. “Who, me?”

“I mean…” She stops herself, and sighs. Even if he was worried, would he tell her? She doesn’t know him, and he doesn’t know _her,_ either, even if he acts like he does. And given that she’d snapped at him only a few hours ago… “Never mind.” She frowns down at Mr. Mew. “You aren’t the easiest person to talk to, are you?”

“You’re just full of insults, aren’t you,” Joshua replies. “Apologies if I’ve been too preoccupied to chatter with you, Shiki. You need only give the word.”

 _Ugh,_ he did that on purpose. She fumbles. “No, that’s not what I…”

He’s smiling again. Shiki bites her lip and takes a deep breath. She is _not_ going to hit him. She refuses to let him win, damn it all. “I’m sorry. That was rude. And I’m sorry for… well, I mean, I’m not sorry for what I said this afternoon, because I meant it—”

His smile has dropped, and Shiki rushes on before he can comment. “But I don’t want to fight! And I—I really don’t think you’re a bad person. I want to work together with you.” She offers a weak smile. Oh, she’s so bad at this. “So I guess, um, truce? Allies?”

He doesn’t move. Shiki looks down at Mr. Mew. “I just… can’t you be just a little nicer? I shouldn’t have insulted you, but… you say things sometimes. We’re partners, though. And if we’re here for all seven days…”

A pause. He’s quiet, just watching her, and Shiki falters again— and then firms. Her back straightens. She holds out her hand to him. “Please,” she says, quietly. “For Neku?”

There is a long stretch of silence. Joshua’s expression is a strange one; he leans back against the booth and crosses his arms, looking vaguely bothered. He turns away, frowns at the window, and then sighs heavily, as if put upon. “Oh, all right,” he mutters, and then turns to her. “Allies, was it?” He blows a strand of hair away from his eyes, and brushes it back behind his ear irritably. Then he reaches out and takes her hand. His palm is cold and dry.

Shiki pauses, startled. She hadn’t really thought he would… but he had, and for that she offers him a smile. “Oh! Um. Good.”

She takes her hand back, and then claps. Well, that was awkward. Time for a change in subject. “So! Okay. I’ve been thinking. We need to find Shinjuku’s… ‘place,’ right? What about the Tokyo Met building?”

“Wow. You’re taking this mystery seriously, aren’t you?” Joshua leans back, resting his chin in his hand. That strange melancholy is gone as if it had never been; now he just seems amused, edging into thoughtful. “Mm, maybe. They don’t tend to be in very obvious areas, though, you realize. Otherwise, Ten-Four would be Shibuya’s.”

“Oh…” Shiki leans back, fiddling with her glasses. “Golden Gai? We _are_ heading in that direction…”

He shrugs. She sighs. This is harder than she thought it would be. How on earth had Neku figured it out last time?

…Oh, right. Joshua.

Shiki slumps in her seat.

“Either way,” Joshua says, after a pause. “We’ll head down the main road tomorrow. I’m interested in that moment of impact, you could say… the Reaper’s Skull in the sky.” He spins a strand of hair around his finger. “Who knows what we’ll find there?”

“Hopefully not a fight,” Shiki murmurs.

“Hmm. That’s a poor attitude. I’m relying on you after all, Miss Shiki.”

She laughs, a little. _Miss._ She’s never met someone who can be both rude and polite all at once. It’s a bit funny. “I mean… you don’t need to, do you? Aren’t you, like, all-powerful or something?”

He giggles. “Well, that’s true. I _am_ pretty powerful. But I don’t like working up a sweat.” Joshua shrugs, hands turning up and open to the air. “Besides, even I have flaws. So do keep up.”

Shiki is well aware of his flaws. The little smile on his face says he knows that, too. But in the spirit of getting along, she humors him. “Really? Like what?”

She means it as a joke, but Joshua hums. “Mm. Well, for one, I can’t jump.”

Shiki blanks for a moment. “Seriously?”

“Mm-hm.”

She considers this. “…Is it because you’re clumsy?”

Joshua blinks. Then he smiles. He turns his face away and hides it behind his hand, but she can see his shoulders shaking. “Wow.”

“What?”

“Just… no one’s ever tried to guess why before.”

Shiki’s getting the hang of this, though. “Or guessed right?” she tries.

He makes a face. But he doesn’t say she’s _wrong_ , and for some reason that makes her laugh—for real, this time. “So that’s it,” she says, hiding her smile behind her hand. “You’re clumsy?”

“I don’t really think you’re one to talk.”

“I’m not! I just…” Her smile fades a little. She studies the table. “It’s funny. I feel like I know you a little better now.”

“Because you know I’m prone to tripping?” Joshua sounds bemused. “All right then.”

Because beyond just being Composer and all-powerful and Neku’s old partner, Joshua is becoming someone real to her. He is a boy who laughs a lot but rarely genuinely, who doesn’t give straight answers—who is snobby, and self-absorbed, and smug. Who has clever insights. Who likes mysteries. Who can’t jump.

She’s still angry at him. She still doesn’t forgive him. She never will. But Shiki leans back against the booth and thinks of Neku, week one, and finds that maybe she can do this after all. Maybe… maybe it can even be fun.

“Well, if there _is_ a fight, I’ll do my best.” She clenches her fist. “I’ll rip them all to shreds!”

Joshua is grinning, wide and amused. Shiki frowns at him. “What?”

“So bloodthirsty. Where do you get it from?” He tugs at his hair again. He looks on the verge of laughter. “Okay. Have fun, Shiki.”

She pauses. “…You’d be helping too!”

“Well, maybe.”

“No, not maybe…!” Joshua is definitely laughing at her. Shiki crosses her arms. This is like Neku in those first few days all over again, but worse somehow. Joshua is doing this on purpose. “Ugh. Boys.”

“Not quite. But I get your point.” Joshua waves a hand through the air. “I was just joking, dear. Don’t take it so hard.”

But Shiki pauses, her thoughts derailed from the banter. _Not quite?_ “Wait. What do you mean not… Oh!” Her eyes widen. “Are you like me?”

The moment she says it, she flushes, and wishes she could take it back. Oh, shoot, is that a good way to ask? Does he even _know_ Shiki is trans? Wait, Composer. Wait, but maybe—

Joshua blinks at her, and then his grin gentles, something closer to a smile, almost half-way to genuine. “Mm, of sorts.”

And that answers that. “Oh,” she says.

“Yes. Well, not entirely the same experience, however. I don’t have any strong feelings about it one way or another.”

Shiki doesn’t entirely understand what he means—she has always felt strongly on who she is, from youth to now. But she nods anyway. “Ah, okay! But, um…”

She frowns a little, unsure of how to ask this. Joshua’s smile widens. “It doesn’t really matter,” he says, sounding amused. “I use the masculine pronoun because I like how it sounds, is all. It’s just words to me. I don’t connect to one gender or the other—or even neither—in any real regard.” He shrugs. “Don’t worry. You haven’t stepped on any toes.”

“I’m glad.” She draws up her knees. She still isn’t sure if she likes Joshua all that much, but that doesn’t mean she wants to hurt him, even if unintentionally. “I guess we have that in common, huh?”

“The younger Bito sibling, too. Should we make a club?” He leans back, and hides a yawn in his hand. “Anyway. Wherever Shinjuku’s Room of Reckoning might be, it’s a problem for the morning.” He holds out his hand, and that dim nightlight sphere sinks down in the air, resting just above his palm. “Anything else you want to bother me with? Because it’s getting dark, and honestly, I would like to get some sleep.”

“Oh. Oh! Right, sorry.” Shiki turns away, leaning her back against the booth, stretching out her legs. “Um… good night.”

“Wonderful.” Their light flickers and dims; Joshua cups it in his hands and then closes his fist quietly, and darkens it to a glow so soft it barely seems there at all, just enough to keep them out of the gloom.

The silence settles around them, not quite calm, not quite right. Shiki stares at the window, thinking on all that she’s learned, and everything she’s still waiting to discover. The quiet stretches. The darkness remains, eternal. She watches the glass and despite it all, can’t bring herself to close her eyes.

Is Neku out there, too? Is he sleeping in a ruin? Maybe he’s nearby, even. Maybe he’s closer than she knows.

She swallows hard. She hopes he’s doing okay. And oh god, Beat—she hopes he got home, that Rhyme is safe and sound with him. She hopes Eri found him. She hopes Eri isn’t… isn’t too upset with her.

Shiki owes her an explanation, probably. Definitely. She’s trying not to think about it. Where should Shiki even begin? She doesn’t want Eri to know she died. Or—or her _entry fee,_ oh god, no. And everything that happened, Rhyme getting erased and the other Players, and…

It’s just easier, isn’t it? If Eri doesn’t know; if Shiki doesn’t tell her. They can be happy and laugh like nothing has changed, like nothing was ever wrong… and Shiki won’t have to think of that time from before, when she couldn’t meet Eri’s eyes, when she could hardly look at her work without hating how it never seemed to measure up. They’re happier now, aren’t they? Is it selfish to want to keep it that way?

…Probably. If Eri found Beat, then, definitely. Eri knows something is up. Eri knows something is wrong. Shiki is—Shiki is just going to have to deal with that.

Oh, she _hates_ the dark. She always thinks too much, too loud. It’s so quiet that everything else feels like its echoing, and it makes all those little worries rise up louder and louder in the back of her head. Awful.

She takes a breath. She draws up her knees, and wraps her arms around her legs. “…Joshua?”

A pause. She hears him sigh. “Yes, Shiki?”

She keeps her eyes on the window. He sounds so calm, she thinks. So unbothered. It needles at her. “Doesn’t it bother you?”

“This again? Really?”

For some reason that hits her sideways; heat flares up in her gut. Her hands clench, fingers digging into Mr. Mew. “Yes, really,” she says, sharper. “This place, this city, the silence. N-Neku. You keep… doesn’t it bother you at _all?”_

“Does it matter?” he replies. “Either way—”

“It matters to me.”

Silence.

“Yes, Shiki,” Joshua says, finally, flatly. She can just barely see him, sitting up straight now, the shadow of a frown on his face. “It bothers me. Happy?”

“You don’t have to snap at me.”

“And _you_ don’t have to go starting a conversation every three seconds, and yet. Honestly, Shiki.” He crosses his arms. “You’re awfully chatty. Most people aren’t nearly so talkative with people they dislike, you know.”

“…I wouldn’t usually be.”

“Oh?” He still isn’t smiling. “Am I just special? How flattering.”

“No, it’s not that. I…” She looks away. Her own flare of irritation has died; now she just feels drained, and a little ashamed. He’d said he was tired, and she is bothering him anyway—snapping at him for nothing, almost the same way he snapped at her earlier today. “Sorry.”

“Hm.”

“Really, I am. It’s just… it’s really quiet here.”

“So you decided to yell at me.” He sounds annoyed. “Don’t people usually _ignore_ others when they’re upset? Can we do that?”

For some reason that almost makes her smile. Shiki keeps her eyes on the window. “Funny,” she says quietly. “Sorry. You know, I… I was going to. From the beginning, actually. I thought I would…” She had taken the pact with the thought that she would ignore him, she would avoid him, she would do what was needed and nothing more. But…

She hasn’t really been doing that, has she? Instead she’s been arguing with him, and talking with him, making plans and ideas and getting ridiculously excited over mysteries. She doesn’t even know why. It just sort of happened that way.

And in the end Shiki rests her chin against her knees and says, “It’s just sad, isn’t it?” A beat. “I just get the feeling… that maybe we could have been friends.”

Another pause. Longer, this time. When Joshua finally replies, he no longer sounds irritated; his voice is low and muted. “I don’t see why that matters.”

Maybe it doesn’t. But Shiki looks out the window, quiet and worn and exhausted all at once, and despite it all, realizes she doesn’t feel as alone anymore. That in some strange way, in all the things they share and the ways they clash, Joshua being here with her makes braving this empty city a little easier.

She keeps her eyes on the window. “Joshua?”

He makes a noise. “What _now?”_

 _“_ …Do you think Neku is okay?”

He hesitates.

Shiki waits, but when he doesn’t answer, she looks back to him. He doesn’t meet her eyes. His head has turned away, back to the window. He is strangely silent.

He’s not smiling anymore. In this moment, Joshua seems tired too. There’s something quiet in him. Something pinched around the eyes.

“Well,” he says, softer than she expected. He taps his finger against the glass. “That _is_ the question, isn’t it?”

It’s not really an answer. But there is understanding in it; the same uncertainty, the fearful wondering. So Shiki nods. She turns away, and says nothing more, and together they watch the midnight streets, waiting for the hour to turn.

.

.

.

And as midnight falls, on the very edge of that hollow city, a girl walks against the wind.

She is alone. She is all on her own. The last one left in all the world. Her eyes are empty and her hands close tight around a memory. She barely seems to move, each step slow and laboring, taking all of her strength. She wanders on into the night. She shivers in the cold. Her lips move soundlessly, as if aching to speak. Waiting to be heard. Waiting to be found. 

She keeps walking. Step by careful step. And slowly, surely, the night moves on, and the second day dawns. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The groups are slowly bonding. …. _Slowly._ They’re doing better than they were in chapter one at least, right??
> 
> This chapter was a lot of fun for a lot of reasons. On one hand I got to discuss/mention a lot of my own personal headcanons for these characters (Joshua being genderqueer, Beat’s kind-of flashback pain, Neku’s struggles with the Game, etc), which is always a delight. But also just… bonding! I adore moments when the characters are legitimately just forced to sit and talk. Quiet moments reveal more than you know. It’s one of the reasons Day Four is my favorite of Week One, despite how it ends. Shiki and Neku do shopping and finally get to know each other beyond the “fighting to survive” details. That’s basically this chapter in a nutshell.
> 
> Joshua and Shiki were the most difficult scene, though. They’re kind of fighting?? But not fighting?? And don’t really know how to talk to each other?? Especially considering how chapter five ended. I love them, but dear god. (Also it’s like, midnight for them, why are they having serious conversations while tired out of their minds… children, please.)
> 
> Little fun note: Beat forgets that the name for the partnership bond is "pact," but likens it to a promise instead, which is actually a more accurate portrayal of what the partnership means to the parties involved. This is an aspect of Beat I really like— for example, his "Shibuya's not cold enough for ice" line. Beat is a logical, straight-line thinker, which means while metaphors may confuse him, he actually understands the heart of issues a lot better, I think. If a wall is up, you break it. If there's a button, you push it. If the game is unfair, and the person in charge makes the rules… become the person in charge. Beat gets it.
> 
> As for why I prefer “promise” rather than “pact”—pact is an agreement. A promise is personal. While the pact is _meant_ as a simple contract to survive, it almost always ends up more. Exhibit A: all of TWEWY hjdsgkjgf 
> 
> We’ve reached the end of arc ii, by the way. Welcome to arc iii: confrontation. 
> 
> Next up: Eri takes the stage! She’s so fun, oh man.
> 
> [If you want to rec this fic, you can reblog it here!!](https://izaswritings.tumblr.com/post/626000197878743040/fic-masterpost-all-thats-left-in-the-world-a) Also, if you have any questions or just want to talk, [my tumblr](http://izaswritings.tumblr.com) is always open! 
> 
> I’m also on twitter as @izabellwit—come talk twewy with me!!
> 
> Any thoughts??


	8. eri

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eri faces the Game head-on, and comes to a few unfortunate realizations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Morning all!! I hope you had a good weekend!
> 
> I’m really relieved I got this chapter out on time. This past month has been…. a lot. I was worried I wouldn’t finish the chapter! Thank you all so much for your feedback and response; it really, truly helped me finish this one. I haven’t yet had time to respond to everyone, but I’ll reply as soon as I can! 
> 
> We’re getting into the third arc proper now, y’all. From here on out, things are about to start snowballing. I hope you enjoy!!
> 
>  **Warnings:** cursing, referenced current character death via Reaper’s Game, references to past character death, friend drama, and self-worth/self-esteem issues. If there’s anything in the chapter you feel I missed, let me know and I’ll add it on here!

Eri and Beat’s first day of casing Shinjuku—what’s left of Shinjuku—goes poorly.

They arrive late, and search until the sun starts going down and turns all the buildings into gothic, spooky silhouettes, and if Beat had his way, would probably have continued searching after dark if Eri had not loudly and firmly put her foot down. (No matter what Beat says later, it was _not_ because the moment the lights went out, Eri had gone stiff and pale and jumpy at the slightest noises. It was not. Eri doesn’t believe in ghosts, not even in the apocalypse, and she is, most certainly, not afraid of the dark. So there.)

Night falls fast and quick, and in the end, they find an empty shell of a café stand and settle down for the night. When the talking finally dies down, and Beat gone to sleep, Eri lays there in the dark for a long time, feeling young and stupid and missing her bed, because it’s the petty things that keep her mind from the frightening things—how hollow Shinjuku has become, how cold, how Shiki hasn’t answered any of her texts at all… how none of Eri’s texts have reached her.

Here are the cold hard facts: Eri has no idea what’s going on.

Beat had tried to explain—Reapers and Games and UGs and whatever—but she suspects he doesn’t really understand it fully himself, and no _wonder._ There’s so much Eri feels like her head is going to explode, this rising scream in her ears like an instrument out of tune, and if she focuses on it too long she thinks she might cry. That first night, she curls up with her Mom’s old brass knuckles clenched tight in one fist, and doesn’t sleep well at all. In the dark nightmare city, her dreams have turned faint and blurry, almost feverish, a distorted echo of her room and her father opening the door, his face fallen in grief, saying, “Eri, honey, I’m so sorry... Shiki is...”

When the sun finally rises—or at least, when the ash-gray sky gets a little lighter— Eri wakes up with her eyes dry and aching, and Beat leaning down over her with a frown. “You okay?” he says, when he sees she’s awake. “You were making noise.”

Outside the café stand, the sky is pale gray and dim; the light barely reaches inside at all. Her mouth feels cottony and her throat tight; dust drifts in the air like snow. Even Beat, brash and bold and bright like a really annoying flare, seems faded here—his pale hair near-colorless, his clothes greyed and the colors turned weak and subdued.

Eri sits up, and scoots away. She doesn’t dislike Beat, mostly; doesn’t really know him, besides the fact he’s part of that weird group of friends Shiki picked up from nowhere and then couldn’t be separated from. “Fine,” she says.

She’s not. There’s dust in her hair and smeared all across her pretty green skirt—the one Shiki stitched her—and the night has left a crick in her neck, her side, the back of her leg. Eri stretches out her leg and takes a breath. “Fine,” she says again, stronger now. “Day two?”

Beat doesn’t look like he believes her, but he leans back, and that’s good enough for Eri. “Yeah,” he says. Hesitant, maybe, and looking like he wants to ask, but in the end, he just shakes his head. “Day two, yo. Ready to go?”

“In a minute.”

“Alright.”

She watches him wander off to repack their stuff and check the surroundings, or some other survival shit she should probably be thinking of, and exhales shakily. Day two. Ugh. She’ll say this for the nightmare-land Shinjuku: if nothing else, it’s convinced her that whatever’s going on, it’s very, _very_ real. Bizarre monsters aside.

Eri works on getting up, stretching out her arm, and tries not to shiver at the memory. _Noise,_ Beat had called them, and Eri still isn’t sure if that’s meant to be ironic or something, because frankly those things hadn’t made a sound. She hasn’t quite mustered the nerve to ask. Those monsters were just…

They would have been beautiful, Eri thinks, in any other circumstance. Those swirling designs and colors, the bold strokes. Even their resemblance to animals… but maybe it’s the resemblance that makes them so unnerving. Their limbs too long, proportions all off, eyes blank and fuzzy like the white static on broken TVs. God. It still makes her shake to think about.

The fact Beat has fought them before—that Shiki has probably fought them before—doesn’t help matters at all. What _happened_ that month, when Shiki was ignoring her? How could Eri have missed this? Her best friend was fighting for her life while Eri… what, sat and moped at home?

It doesn’t make sense. It just doesn’t _fit._ She knows they had that fight, but… surely Shiki must have known Eri would have come to her side in a heartbeat, right? Even if their phones didn’t work or whatever, couldn’t she just have told Eri straight? Shiki must have known Eri would help, right? …Right?

(Her fingers curl tight over the brass knuckles. In her head, her dad’s voice echoes. _Eri, honey… Shiki is—_ )

Eri hates this city. Shinjuku: officially on her shit list! Forget the creepy apocalypse aesthetic, ignore the blood-red clouded sky and the cloying taste of ash. Damn the broken rubble and everything. Eri could handle all of it, but these stupid Games and stupid monsters, and all the questions they bring with them… yeah, no. That, Eri can’t forgive.

And the silence—god! The silence. It hadn’t bothered her too much at first, but the longer this ordeal goes on the more it itches at her. The Noise, too… their bright colors all dull and ashy like everything else in this ghost town, and as Eri had watched them stalk the streets, the lack of—anything—click of claws or snarling or even static—had made something knot in her throat. This place. Just, this _place._

 _Café-man should have sent Mom here instead of me._ Her mom would laugh and laugh if she knew Eri was getting freaked out by the quiet; deafness, an automatic defense mechanism against the apocalypse. This place and its creepy silence would barely phase her, though the sheer destruction would probably still make Mom look twice.

Ugh, and now Eri’s thinking about her parents, and missing them, and missing home all over again. Stupid brain. Mom isn’t here, and even if that absence of her—of anyone— aches more than even the silence, Eri just has to deal.

She finishes stretching out her arm and moves on to rolling her shoulder. Ow. Café stand floors are so not comfortable resting places. Which, speaking of…

“I can’t _believe_ I slept on the floor,” Eri mutters to herself, rubbing at her neck. Shiki owes her for this. Shiki owes her… a reply and a call back, maybe. It’s not her phone, Eri’s pretty sure—she’d called her parents last night, said she was staying at a friend’s place, and learned in the ensuing conversation that according to the rest of the world, Shinjuku had never existed in the first place. _What are you talking about, Eri?_ Ha, ha, ha.

This is so not how Eri wanted to spend her summer.

She takes a moment to cover her eyes and breathe, and then she rises to her feet and smacks the dust off her skirt. That’s probably as good as she’s going to get. It’s time to face the day.

Beat is waiting by the entrance, rubbing absently at his wrist. Eri comes up beside him. He eyes her. “You ready?”

She shrugs, and fusses a little with the bangle on her arm. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

He frowns at her, a little. Eri stares coolly back.

“If you say so,” Beat says finally, and hands her a protein bar before heading out the door.

Eri takes the bar with a grimace, and follows after him. As they walk, she peels the bar open, chewing it glumly. The second worst thing about this endeavor. She’d been so shaken by, like, _everything_... she’d forgotten to prepare. No supplies, no food… no water.

Or so she’d thought, anyway. She’s still not sure what to make of the backpack of supplies they found when they stopped to rest, or of the way Beat lit up and went “Thanks, Coffee Man!” but like. After yesterday? It’s fine. It’s whatever.

She checks her phone—no messages getting through to Shiki, okay, okay—and then crumples the wrapper in her hand. Go time. Maybe she isn’t the fondest of Beat (or Rhyme, or _Neku,_ but—) but, Eri can do this. She can. For Shiki, if nothing else. Eri’s feelings on the matter don’t mean shit in the face of yesterday: the way Shiki had gone dead white, the way her eyes had gone lifeless and blank and far-seeing at that phone call. The way she’d stared right through Eri— _right_ through her, like she wasn’t there. Like nothing was there. Like for a moment, for Shiki, the whole world stopped turning.

And yeah, thank god, it hadn’t lasted long. Shiki had hung up the phone and gone scary intense instead, before running off to do—whatever it was she was planning. But Eri... Eri doesn’t think she’ll forget that look anytime soon.

And that matters too. Eri isn’t the fondest of Neku, but she’s never wanted him _dead,_ and—and if that’s what Shiki looks like when Neku is gone, if that’s what taking Neku away does to Shiki... then yeah. Eri’s here. She’ll play this weird fucking murder game for dead kids and she’ll help skater-boy track down the cutesy girl with the gun and Eri is going to do whatever she can. Whatever it takes. Whatever’s needed to make sure Shiki never has to make that face again.

It just. Galls, a little. A tiny bit. _Neku._ Beat, Rhyme, etcetera. Why them? Eri knew Shiki longest. Eri has known Shiki for like, ever. Where did these people even come from? And why—why are they so—?

 _It’s not jealousy!_ Eri tells herself, now out on the streets proper and squinting up into the glaring white foggy day. Eri isn’t jealous. She’s not. It’s just weird, is all. It’s just— it’s always been just her and Shiki, before. She’s not sure where these strangers fit into that. She’s not sure why they have to. 

She kicks a rock, somewhat vindictive. It bounces away very pitifully. Eri tilts back her head and sighs. Ow, daylight. Burning her cornea. Another thing she forgot: sunglasses.

She can’t see the sun, but this dead Shinjuku is bright anyway; it’s like it is reflecting the light tenfold. Makes sense, in a way. Empty buildings and blank screens—what else is it supposed to do if not reflect? It’s not like it’s got any image of its own to show.

Eri kicks another rock. It doesn’t even make a sound. God, this place is so creepy.

“Hey, uh...”

She resists the urge to sigh at him; her fingers clench. “What?”

Beat is walking with her, now, fallen back to match her pace. He rubs at his shoulder like he’s trying to press out an ache, and squints at her like she’s the sun. “You, uh... you sure you okay? ‘Cause like—”

“I already said I was fine.” 

“I mean, yeah, but—”

“Look,” she says, losing her patience. “I’m in a nightmare city in a nightmare place looking for fucking _Neku Sakuraba_ and we’ve been here for hours and nothing’s happened and so far I think I’ve been holding together pretty damn well, so could we just—” She throws up her hands. “Can we not!”

She pauses, breathing hard. Beat looks away first. “Whatever, yo,” he says, a little stiff, and takes off down the street. “I won’t ask again, alright, I got it.”

There’s a brief flare of shame—he hasn’t even done anything, and here she is, yelling at him like he’s the cause for everything—but Eri is tired, and she’s just woken up, and she’s thinking of Shiki now, Shiki with Beat and Neku and Rhyme, the way Shiki smiled. And suddenly she doesn’t feel sorry at all. “Good.”

He shakes his head but doesn’t say a word, just checks in another building. Turns away, and heads to the next one. Conversation apparently over. Well, that’s just fine with Eri.

Beat heads over to _another_ ruin, though, and Eri lingers back, hand on her hip, starting to frown. He’d done this last night, too, before it got dark; Eri makes an incredulous noise. “Are we _really_ checking every single building for this Reaper girl?” He’s not even checking them properly—one glance through the windows and gone.

Beat’s expression sours a little. “Yeah? So? Man, why aren’t _you_ lookin’?”

“I don’t think we’re going to find her like that,” Eri informs him. “I mean—isn’t she—that’s too easy.”

“You got a better idea?” he says, but it seems rhetorical, because barely a second later he shakes his head hard, fists clenched and says, “Bah, figures,” which makes no sense at all, and then he makes a sharp, angry noise in the back of his throat, puts down his skateboard, and starts rolling away.

“I—you—what?” Eri stares after him. He gets further away. What the _fuck?_ “Seriously!? Where are you going!”

He ignores her. “This is taking too long, yo!” He puts down his foot and stops with a jolt, and shakes his fist at the bleeding morning sky. “OI! Reaper girl! Coco! Get the fuck out here, man!”

Holy shit. He— he really just did that, Eri realizes. He left in the middle of her talking. He’s speeding away on his damn skateboard and yelling for the murderous _Reaper with a gun_ while she—

Ugh.

What does Shiki see in these people?

“What are you doing? Stop that!” Eri cries, ineffectually, and jogs after him. He’s stopped, thank goodness—staring up at the sky with a scowl, hands curled to frustrated fists. His lip is getting worried through his teeth. His foot is tapping. “Oh my god. What were you thinking? What if she—and you—do you _ever_ slow down?”

He blinks at the clouds and then turns and blinks down at her. “Nope,” he says, though he sounds a bit sheepish about it. His shoulders slump a bit. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to leave in the middle of the convo, just… ah, it’s just getting to me. Phones used to— anyway, sorry about that. I just thought...” He trails off. He stares with a furrowed brow over the city, and makes a noise in the back of his throat. “Man. You really don’t like Phones, do you?”

Eri has to mentally rewind their conversation for a few minutes until she gets it, and then she flushes a dull red. _In a nightmare city in a nightmare place looking for fucking **Neku Sakuraba**_ … possibly, maybe, a bit obvious. Whoops. “I— look, I’m just frustrated. It doesn’t mean anything.” 

Beat only shrugs. “Alright. If you say so. Rhyme always says I jump to conclusions…” He trails off again, and then shakes his head. “Well, anyway.” He takes a deep breath. “ _OI,_ COCO—”

Eri muffles a scream behind her teeth and lunges at him, dragging him back. Beat yelps. “Come _on!_ You’re just drawing the attention of all those monsters to us! There’s obviously no way that’s actually going to w—”

Their phones ding at the same time. Eri chokes.

There’s a long moment of stiff silence. Beat reaches for his phone first.

“Don’t—”

He’s already opened it. Eri covers her face.

“…Damn,” Beat says, finally. The anger has fled from him; he sounds tired now, worn and a little frustrated. He presses a hand over his eyes. “She’s just messing with us.”

Eri warily reaches for her own phone—first café guy, and now this murderous Reaper, how do these people keep _getting Eri’s number_ —and flips it open.

Her hand tightens at once. This is… what even is this? Eri has a set font for her phone, meticulously installed settings and everything, and somehow this text message has defied all of them. Coco has mangled the look of the kanji something awful; Eri wants to strangle her partly for the poor aesthetics and partly in revenge for her eyes.

Next to her, Beat shakes his head. “Argh, this doesn’t make any sense to me, yo. Hey, can you read this shit?”

Eri doesn’t grit her teeth, but it’s a near thing. Damn, she knew he’d ask. She flits her gaze back to the text message—big and ballooned and pink-lettering like the writer was trying to be cute, with so many hearts it makes the designer in Eri wrinkle her nose and sniff, _tacky._ Plus, she thinks—is that short-hand? Oh, fuck.

If she’d had better sleep, if she wasn’t exhausted, if there wasn’t a headache pounding behind her eyes, then maybe Eri would have some success parsing through it. As it is, she flips her phone shut. “No,” she says stiffly, but when Beat just nods and sighs and turns away, she relaxes a little. “Can you?”

He mutters. “Game… welcome… I think she’s asking us to play? Definitely from that damn Reaper girl, though.” He scowls, and flashes the signature at her; _COCO,_ written out in English with a big and scrawling font.

Eri looks back to her phone with a clench to her gut.

Beat groans and snaps the phone shut. “Whatever, yo. Who cares what shit she has to say. Probably just a stupid game. Reapers love that stuff.” 

Eri bites her lip and opens her phone again. No. Language still not computing. Still... “If it’s from the girl we’re tracking down, there might be a clue. Shouldn’t we—”

“Nah, it’s cool.” She frowns at him, but Beat grins back, wide and a little brash, and punches his fist into his palm. “Look, trust me on this one. I’ve got this, yo! They want a game, I’m not gonna play. Works every time.”

That doesn’t seem quite right to Eri. “Um.”

His smile falters a little. He rubs the back of his neck. “...Look, I—I, um, I’m not the smartest, I don’t get things sometimes, I get _that,_ but— I dunno, it’s worked before, alright? People like Miss Chiff, you know, they want... they need people to play. And when I was in the Game...”

He makes a noise, waves his hand, as if trying to find the words. “I mean, they erase you if you don’t do the missions, sure, but shit like this is different, yo! When you don’t play, turns out they end up coming right to you. Get them mad, and then hit ‘em when they’re distracted, and bam! Reaper down!”

There’s a pause. Beat trails off at Eri’s stare, turning red, and looks away. “It, uh, worked for me and Phones, so I... never mind, you’re probably right, it’s stupid. Let’s—”

“Erase you?” Eri echoes, hollow, and Beat stops mid-word and blinks at her. “What do you mean, they _erase_ you?”

Beat blanches. “Uh.”

Eri’s mind is whirling. “Do you mean—if you fail a mission, they _kill_ you?” But then… “No. No, that doesn’t make sense, then why would it be erasure? That’s just murder.”

“Well, yeah, it is,” Beat says, looking uncertain. “But we were kind of already—”

He stops. Eri stops. Beat’s eyes go wide. “ _Oh,_ ” he says, and then he starts waving his hands, laughing loudly and nervously. “Never mind, yo, t-that’s not—anyway, what about this weird-ass text, right—”

Eri isn’t listening anymore. “Already,” she says. Neku, shot dead by the murderous Reaper— _he’s in the Reapers’ Game, a contest to come back to life,_ isn’t that what that weird café guy had said? And on second thought, with what she knows now: isn’t that odd? Isn’t that _strange?_ Doesn’t that mean…

“Already,” she says again, and her breathing picks up. Oh no. Oh _no._ “But then—if that means—you have to be dead to get into the Game? But you were _in_ the Game. I don’t understand. If Neku is—and you—but then, that means—”

The dream comes back to her. Eri claps a hand over her mouth. She falls to her knees.

“Woah, woah, woah, I— Eri— yo, you okay!?”

She should have realized this sooner, Eri thinks. She should have connected the dots as soon as Beat explained the Game to her, as soon as he’d said he was a Player too. That awful echo of a dream. All those questions about where and how and when Shiki met Neku, met Beat, met Rhyme. 

“Shiki died?” she asks, and her voice is very small.

“Oh, shit,” Beat says, and kneels next to her, hands fluttering over her shoulders like he doesn’t know what to do. Eri has the same goddamn tick. Somehow that hits her hardest of all; she starts hiccupping. The alarm on Beat’s face deepens to panic. “Oh man, no, I— she’s not! Anymore! We got out, yo, we all came back. Good as new!”

And now, at last, she has a better idea of why they all called it _the Game._ She thinks she might be sick. She wipes at her eyes. “Y-you won?”

“Well, that’s... y-yeah.” Beat looks away. Then he looks back at her. “Shiki’s alright. And she’s strong. Whatever she’s doing now, she’s probably kicking ass. Maybe even beating us to Phones, or the Reaper girl.” His smile is weak and false, but it stretches wide on his face. “I don’t— I don’t know much. Sorry. But she’s okay, yo, I can feel it. And when this is done you can go and yell at her all you like.” He awkwardly claps her shoulder. Eri presses her hands against her eyes, the sudden crying fit fading as quickly as it started. “You... uh...”

She exhales, slowly. Her head pounds. “F-fine. I’m fine. I’ll be fine.” She brushes his hand away—kinder, this time—and rises unsteadily to her feet. Games and Reapers and Shiki dying. She supposes she understands why Shiki went so blank in the eyes, before. It feels a little like getting hollowed. “Let’s... let’s talk about something else.”

“Uh... well, okay, but—”

“Plan,” Eri tells herself, and rubs at her cheeks. Ugh, makeup smeared everywhere. She rubs at it harder. It’s already faded from the night—and who cares how put together she looks right now? It’s the damn apocalypse, or something. “You said you had a plan?”

“Well... nah, never mind it, it was kind of stupid—”

But Eri remembers it now, and she rubs at her face one last time and takes a deep breath, thinking. “Don’t play their games. Anger her into coming to us.” She exhales carefully, and swallows down the last stray sob in her throat. “That... that could work.”

Beat brightens at once. “Yo, you think so?”

“…Yeah.” Her breathing is settling. She blinks and shakes her head and straightens. “Y-yeah. If we—I mean, this message... she responded to you. She’s paying attention. She’s trying to make us do _something._ and if we don’t do it...” If they just ignore it entirely, or do something so out of bounds ridiculous... this is a girl who was willing to kill someone for this, whatever her goals are, right? So she’s taking this seriously. She’s got _plans._

The more she thinks about it, the more it clicks. Because really, Eri thinks. What better way to draw the mastermind to you, than to treat the mastermind in question as irrelevant? She’s pretty sure she saw it work in a movie once, or something.

And hey, even if it doesn’t work... at least they tried. One option down.

She feels a little more settled now. She tugs at her skirt hem and gives Beat a weak smile. “Hey, works for me.”

“Really? Aw, hell yeah!” He punches the air. His face tightens, a brief flash of pain, but Eri blinks and a second later it's gone. Beat shakes his head and laughs it off. “Man, I was worried for a second there. I know you don’t like me, so I thought that you’d—”

“—What?”

“—shut me down... what?”

“It’s not... I don’t... I don’t dislike you,” Eri says, and feels it burn in her cheeks like heat.

He frowns at her. “I don’t mind it,” he says, slowly. “But you think we don’t see the looks you give us? Me and Phones?” He rubs at his hat. “Now if it was at _Rhyme,_ that’s nuts, but it’s whatever, I guess. Can’t like everybody. We’re cool, man.”

Some part of Eri is horrified. “You—” They noticed? Oh god. Had Shiki noticed? Oh _no._ “I don’t hate you,” she says, and she means it, but she’s bright red anyway. Ughhh. “And I—I wouldn’t shut you down even if I did. I wouldn’t. You have some pretty good ideas sometimes.” 

Beat looks back at her with raised eyebrows like she’s said something silly and it actually hurts, a little, to see that. “You do. I mean it. Maybe you don’t think things through, and maybe you rush ahead a lot, but that’s—that’s not—” She doesn’t have the words for this, the language, and she bites her tongue hard and shakes her head. “I actually kind of— can I tell you something?”

He blinks at her. “Uh… ‘course.”

“Thanks.” Eri takes a deep breath. “I want, more than anything—I’ve always wanted to be a designer.”

He nods. “Like Shiki!”

“Yeah.” The reminder of Shiki warms her. She imagines Shiki’s smile, her quiet encouragement, the way she took scribbles and half-hearted dreams and turned them into something real, something Eri could hold in her hands and look at and really, really see. _I can do this. With you, I can do anything._

She wonders if Shiki will ever know just how much that moment meant to Eri. Maybe not.

“Yeah,” Eri says, more decided now. The things Shiki gave to Eri… maybe she can pay it forward. Give it to Beat, too. “But some people—I mean—trends are fickle. So is design. And, and I’ve had people tell me… that I’m an airhead, I’m vapid and s-self-centered and fake because I like clothes and I like how they make me look and wanting to make clothes isn’t—isn’t—well. You know.” She makes her voice high and mocking. “It’s a _bad idea._ ”

Beat is staring at her. “What, seriously? Why? Look, trends don’t make much sense to me, but staying on top of them—making shit that a whole lotta people wanna wear—” He shakes his head. “That’s amazing, yo!”

“I know,” Eri says, and smiles a little. “I… um, confession time, I guess? But I’m not too good at math. And… I— I have a lot of trouble reading. Um, anything. It’s just brain stuff.” He’s watching her, intently, and her eyes drop and skitter across the ground. “I guess what I’m trying to say is, I get it. Not… getting things. If that makes sense. But that doesn’t make me—doesn’t make you—we’re not—” She struggles for the words. “I’m never going to just… Argh!”

“Nah, it’s okay.” 

“It’s not, I—”

“I hear you,” Beat says, a little quieter, and Eri shuts up and looks at him fully now, scanning his face, trying to make sure he means it. He grins at her. “Rhyme says it too, and they’re plenty smart; if both of you are telling me, I guess there’s gotta be some truth to it, huh?”

“Guess so,” Eri echoes. “I wouldn’t… I wouldn’t just shut you down. I’ve been listening. I promise.” She hopes so.

Beat shakes his head. “Yeah, I know. Sorry, yo. I didn’t mean it like that. I know you wouldn’t… just, I don’t really have something I’m good at. Not like you and Shiki, or even Phones. And Rhyme, man, you should see them go, they’re good at everything. But me…”

He pauses. “I haven’t found… what clicks for me, yo.” Beat stares at the ground. “Never did, even before this whole mess. Guess I’m just a little nervous I won’t ever find it.”

“Well, I can tell you one thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Listening,” Eri says, awkward, and shuffles on her feet, thinking back to last night. “Really… _really_ hearing people. I think you understand what’s important, Beat.” She offers him a weak smile. “I’m sorry for earlier. I’m not mad at you, I didn’t mean— it’s not you. You’re fine. I just, I don’t know. Shiki cares a lot about you guys. And you always make her... she always smiles so much.” The way she trusts Neku. The way Beat will say one thing and Shiki’s eyes will light up, bright with fondness. The way the very sight of Rhyme is enough to make Shiki smile. “I wish I could do that too.”

“Understandin’ what’s important, huh?” He rubs the back of his head, looking almost bashful. “Y-you think so?”

There is a memory in the back of Eri’s mind—faint, distant, watery as a dream. _You aren’t meant to be a designer_ and the way Shiki’s face had fallen flat, like Eri had slapped her instead. If Eri could have listened better, maybe she would have seen it earlier. Maybe she could have understood why it hurt Shiki to hear that. And maybe, just maybe, she could have known what Shiki needed to hear instead.

“Yes,” Eri says. “I absolutely do.”

Beat smiles at her, bright and beaming. Eri looks back at him, quieter now, and for a moment she tries to see him fully. Tries to see what Shiki must see in him. He’s a kind listener. He’s brash and bold and loud. He’s got a good heart, even if he fumbles with it.

Maybe she’s got this all wrong. Maybe she really hasn’t been listening, or seeing him, the way she should. Maybe Eri can do better, be better, and take a chance to know this person who has found his way into Shiki’s life so perfectly, and see how maybe he can start fitting into hers too.

Maybe, she thinks. Maybe.

But for now, she loops her arm with Beat’s like she does with her friends, and offers him a more genuine smile. “Let’s give that Reaper girl hell,” she says, and when Beat throws back his head and whoops in agreement, fist raised, Eri taps his fist back with a grin stretching ear to ear.

And just maybe, she thinks—maybe she can do this after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alternate summary: Eri’s no-good, very terrible, very very bad day(s). Because seriously. Yikes.
> 
> We’re not entirely done with Eri’s reaction to Shiki’s death, by the way. It’s just been put on pause, because Eri reacts to bad news by pretending it’s either Not There or Not The Time but that can really only work for so long… Eri needs a break, probably.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed my take on her! Lots of Eri headcanons in this chapter. We know basically nothing about her, so I’m calling free rein. I had a lot of fun with her!! I’m really excited to introduce her little character arc. I thought it only fitting it be tied up with jealousy, ahaha. Shiki has new friends out of nowhere, who she trusts with her life, who make her laugh… and Eri, who’s last solid memory of the past month is of hurting Shiki (however unintentionally) … yeah. Eri might not remember the Game all that well, but it’s definitely left its marks, I think.
> 
> I wrote the last scene over quite a few times, trying to figure out how Beat would react to Eri’s kind-of dislike of him and the group. In the end, I figure he wouldn’t care?? Like, if she insulted him to his face, yeah, he would yell right back, but regarding just what people _think_ of him… especially post-game? Yeah, Beat’s immune. Like, he’s a bit disappointed by it, because he thinks Eri’s pretty cool, but he doesn’t waste time on it. (Now, if Eri was rude to _Rhyme_ … different story.)
> 
> Also, Hanekoma absolutely sent them on their way in chapter 3, went “oh fuck, kids need to eat” like ten minutes later, and dropped a care pack on their heads as soon as he had the time. Because he is also a disaster. Just, like, secretly. (He’s incredibly lucky Joshua isn’t there to mock him for it.)
> 
> Next up: Neku! This was supposed to be the Sho POV chapter, but he made me cry, so it’s Neku again. Still lots of Sho though. Math man kills me, but I love him… 
> 
> I’ll give him a POV chapter eventually, I promise!!
> 
> [If you want to rec this fic, you can reblog it here!!](https://izaswritings.tumblr.com/post/626000197878743040/fic-masterpost-all-thats-left-in-the-world-a) Also, if you have any questions or just want to talk, [my tumblr](http://izaswritings.tumblr.com) is always open! 
> 
> I’m also on twitter as @izabellwit—come talk twewy with me!!
> 
> Any thoughts?


	9. neku

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Neku and Sho reach a breaking point.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m so sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out! School and life have joined forces to ruin me… I also haven’t yet had a chance to really reply to all your wonderful comments, and I don’t know if I ever will at this point, but please know it really means a lot to see what you guys think of this story!!! It really and truly made my month, despite everything. Thank you so much!!
> 
> On another note, I’m so excited to unveil this chapter. We’re finally getting into the action!! It’s time to get this ball rolling…
> 
>  **Warnings:** cursing, murder and erasure mentions, and referenced character death via the Reaper’s Game. If there’s anything in the chapter you feel I missed, let me know and I’ll add it on here!

**_It’s all gone. It’s all gone away. She took it all away._ **

**_I told her to stop, I asked her to stop—she won’t stop. Stop her. Please, someone stop her._ **

**_She’s going to take everything away._ **

****

.

.

.

Neku is starting to lose patience.

It’s day two in this new nightmare game, and their progress has been… null, basically. Surprise surprise. The night was long and restless and Neku barely slept at all, too wound up and waiting and convinced, deep down, that any second now he’d blink and the day would change, time taken away, Day 2 start. But the blackout had never come, and now it is morning, and he feels like he’s been here years instead of only 24 hours, the timer on his hand ticked down to six days and counting.

He wakes up before Minamimoto, and watches the seconds fall away for a long time before he thinks to move. Six days. Six full days. Neku curls his hand into a fist. He knows he’s not going to kill Joshua. But then, what _is_ Neku going to do?

He’s already lost a day. And yeah, sure he has six days left to make it count, but— but still. He feels ill. He watches the sky lighten outside of his window—the blood-red shine in the clouds is lovely, fucking perfect, leave it to Coco to fuck up _literally everything—_ and exhales very softly. Okay. Okay.

Day 2, here they go.

“Now might be a good time for another future vision,” he says to the girl whose voice has been haunting his head, only half-joking. He’d heard echoes of her throughout the night—whispered mutterings and pleas, and flashes of a ruined road through a suburb. But once again, there’s no reply, though there’s a static buzz in his ears that feels kind of itchy. Neku sighs. 

Minamimoto wakes up not long after, and they hit the roads before the city has fully lit up. The border is a no-go; all that’s left is to scour the town. The problem is—and yeah, it kind of horrifies Neku to realize it—but the problem is there’s _nothing to do._ They don’t know where they are. They don’t know where they’re going. There’s no missions or wall requests or shops or anything, and yeah, okay, it’s getting to him.

 _I can say this for Joshua’s Game,_ Neku thinks, bitterly, picking his way after Minamimoto—who has, once again, taken off without even checking if Neku was awake. The asshole. _At least it was never boring._

He’s sort of annoyed he has to even admit that, honestly— even more annoyed to find he misses it. The daily missions had been terrifying, the shopping exasperating, the Support Reapers their own brand of trouble… but at least there had been something to _do._ A goal to fixate on, distractions to find, people to Reaper Creeper or whatever.

There’s none of that here. There’s _nothing here._ Just monsters, and empty buildings, and fucking Pi-Face, who has, somehow, in less than a day, stolen the title of “worst partner ever” right out of Joshua’s hands. Neku hadn’t thought it possible, but hey! Here they are!

He’s in a life-or-death deathtrap of a game, and he’s bored. Neku is aware of the irony.

He shoves his hands in his pockets, irritated with himself, and kicks hard at a rock in the road. They’re in some ruin of the main city shopping district—the numerous alleyways and big destroyed pavilion give it away, honestly—and while they’ve fought a few Noise, and run into another one of the possessed people again, all in all its almost mid-day and Neku is starting to get restless.

He tries not to think about what Minamimoto had said last night—or implied, anyway, but isn’t that basically the same thing? It’s not like… Neku doesn’t feel at home in the Game. He doesn’t. He doesn’t even miss it. Maybe it was the place where Neku found himself—maybe it was the place that really made him see the city, and the people around him—but Neku is glad the Game is over. He really is.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Minamimoto wasn’t entirely wrong. Because—and its sick, kind of, because Neku feels _settled_ , here, for the first time in a while. The lightning in his hands, the power in his grasp—it soothes some restless drive Neku hadn’t even realized was there. It’s easier to stop jumping at shadows, because the danger is back and it is real, and it is terrible, it is the worst thing ever, because some part of Neku, beneath the terror and the anger and the frustration at doing all this again—some part of him is whispering, _finally._

And no, that’s it, he’s got to stop thinking about this, full stop. Neku clenches his hands in and out of fists and sighs.

“This isn’t working,” Neku says, loudly, stopping on one street corner. Minamimoto… keeps walking. “Hey, Grim Heaper! This _isn’t working._ We have to figure something else out.”

Because god knows they aren’t getting anywhere with aimless wandering. They’ve already found the border of the city, their one achievement from yesterday— but they’re caged in here, so that’s a useless avenue too. Neku really doesn’t get it. _Kill the Composer of Shibuya,_ but they can’t even get _into_ Shibuya. He can’t tell if this is on purpose or if Coco just, like… forgot or something.

It’s probably on purpose. There’s probably something else going on. God forbid Neku ever gets shot by someone normal, who makes mistakes, like a reasonable person. No, no. He gets all the megalomaniacs, instead. And Joshua, whatever Joshua counts as.

And… Minamimoto is still walking. Holy shit. 

_“Hey!”_

“Eight, nine, ten seconds wasted,” Minamimoto snaps back. “Useless radian. Who gives a digit what you think? It’s all figured out. Don’t become an unknown variable.”

Neku hates that he even knows what that means. It feels like some kind of insult, maybe? Neku was good at math in school. Numbers made sense, sort of. Leave it to damn Pi-Face to make it irritating, though. _Ugh._ “Figured out,” Neku repeats. “Figured out by who!? Look, asshole, we’re basically walking in circles. There’s nothing here!”

Walking in circles. Wait. Does that count as a math pun?

Neku is briefly distracted from rage by the urge to strangle himself. _Never again._ He will not be swayed. Joshua would never let him live it down.

(If he ever shows up again. If he even—)

“My calculations are flawless,” Minamimoto is saying, providing a wonderful distraction from the direction Neku’s thoughts were taking. Thank god. “Constants should just stay in line and act as they’re supposed to.”

“Great, wonderful, except I’m not a constant.” Neku resists the urge to throw up his hands. “Why are you even— we already established we’re not getting into Shibuya. What are you looking for?”

Minamimoto snorts. Neku narrows his eyes, and talks fast, before he can get insulted again. “And don’t tell me I don’t need to know. Are you a Reaper or not? Don’t you know how the Game works? We’re in a pact, asshole. Work with me here. _Where are we going._ ”

Minamimoto makes a face, but he finally stops walking, and turns back around to consider Neku again. “What else? There’s only one possible solution.”

“Kill the Composer, yeah, but—”

“Think! The numbers add up. If we can’t get into Shibuya, you useless hectopascal, then we don’t need to. Easy math.”

Neku stalls, at that. Sure, he’d thought as much. But… it doesn’t make sense. Why would Joshua leave Shibuya? Why would he even need to? Unless he’s here for Neku, but… hah. Wishful thinking, right? Neku may be alive and well (or, he was), and that says a lot, but… it’s been a month since the Game. Two, three weeks since he spoke to Joshua, and invited him to the statue. And invited him again. And again.

Joshua never answered.

So, yeah. No. Maybe the math is making sense to Minamimoto, but it’s definitely not adding up for him.

But again: saying any of this to _freaking Pi-Face_ is just, hah. Not happening. Neku shoves his hands in his pockets and looks away, ducking his chin to better hide his expression in his collar. “Why does it even matter?” he says, grudgingly curious. “Do you want to be Composer _that_ bad?”

Minamimoto scoffs. “That’s a zetta stupid question. Why _not?”_

And that’s. Well. “Are you serious?” Neku snaps, suddenly irritated with the whole mess. Everything this guy did. The Taboo Noise, the explosions, _everything._ And his goddamn reasoning is “why not?” People had _died._ Reapers and Players alike— Sota, Nao, the support Reaper. It makes something curl tight and ugly in his chest, makes something else echo in his ears.

There are things from the Game that haunt him always, and this is one of them: Sota’s face, smiling pained but true. Even Joshua seemingly struck silent. The way Sota just seemed to… fade away. Gone in a matter of seconds, nothing left behind, as if he’d never been there at all.

_You two survive. Get your old partner back. I hope all three of you… get back safe._

“Whatever.” Minamimoto turns away. “We’ve wasted enough time. If you’re done, I want to at least check out Shinjuku Park before—”

“No, I’m not _done!”_ Neku yanks at his shoulder, spinning him around; the older teen is taller than him, sure, but Neku curls his fingers in that stupid collar and holds tight, something cold and angry singing through his veins. “For someone who likes math so much, you aren’t that fucking good at it!”

Where every other insult slips off, this is the one thing that seems to knock Minamimoto sideways. He gapes, for one instant, and then his mouth snaps shut, an angry flush darkening his cheeks. His eyes are bright with rage. “You—”

“Shut _up,”_ Neku snaps, furious. “What is _with_ you!? Do you get the Game or not? I’m not some part of your stupid equation! I’m not going to just agree and follow you because you say so!” He snarls, a little. “What is your plan? Do you even have one? Because if its ‘kill the Composer,’ _again—_ ”

Minamimoto grips at Neku’s wrist, almost in warning, nails digging into the skin of his hand. “My calculations are flawless! This opportunity—”

“Because you did _so_ well at killing Josh the last three times you tried,” Neku says, flat. He lets go of Minamimoto’s collar, stepping back and away in disgust. “For flawless calculations, they sure didn’t work out right, did they?”

Minamimoto’s lips curl back from his teeth, the first open expression of rage Neku’s seen from him yet. “You—”

“Useless radian? Factoring hectopascal?” Neku crosses his arms, unimpressed. “Brain-dead binomial? Right. Okay. You haven’t done _anything_.”

Minamimoto looks wild around the eyes. “I did everything!” He opens his arms. “Reborn! I can never die! I—”

“You didn’t accomplish shit!” Neku retorts. “You know, except for killing a bunch of people. Congratulations. You’re a grade-A murderer with nothing to show for it.” He throws up his hands. “Shades may have brainwashed the whole damn city, but at least he had a reason! But, what, you just did all that for _kicks?_ Because you _could?”_ Neku lowers his hands, scoffing. “Get a new hobby, if you’re so bored.”

There’s a beat of silence. Minamimoto is grit-toothed and furious, but then something flashes over his face, and he almost seems to falter. His eyes narrow. His fingers curl, and his smile returns, almost a bare of teeth. “Josh, huh?” he says, coolly. “I guess you figured out your little partner’s identity after all.”

Neku lifts his chin, leaning back on his heels. “So what if I did?”

“Then you’re in the same boat as me.” His smile flashes to a grin, wide and fierce. “The Composer’s identity is jealously guarded. Past failures don’t matter. We eliminate him, or he eliminates us.”

Neku stares at him. “That’s… what? But I’ve known for—”

He cuts himself off. It’s too late. Minamimoto is staring at him. “What?” he says. The anger returns. This time he steps forward. “What did you say?”

Neku scowls back at him. If the Grim Heaper thinks he can play at being intimidating, he’s got another thing coming. Neku has vivid memories of this guy getting crushed under a car. The more time he talks with Minamimoto, the more said memory becomes a cheerful recollection. “I found out about Josh at the end of my third week,” he says, stiffly. Hell, he’d told Shiki and Beat and Rhyme, too. No one had stopped him. He hadn’t even known he wasn’t allowed, and nothing happened afterward, either. Yet another thing to add on the exhausting list of shit Joshua’s done that Neku doesn’t know how to feel about, apparently. “It’s been, what, a month since then?”

“So you hid it—”

“Uh, no, he outed himself pretty obviously. He knows I know.” Neku places a hand on his hip, unimpressed. “Don’t ask me why, either. I don’t know why Joshua does anything, but at least he makes more sense than _you.”_

Some sense, anyway. The things Joshua says and the things he does, always at odds. But on some level, Neku understands Joshua better than he’s understood anyone, and even now, it still applies. Minamimoto, though. No. And it burns, really, because Neku is _trying,_ he’s partnered with this guy and there must be a reason, there must be some way they can work together, but the more he interacts with him the angrier he is. Sota, Nao. Even Joshua, still, somewhere deep inside Neku’s head, the part that forgets Joshua was never dead at all, the part that’s stuck, always, on that moment—the hand shoving him away, and Joshua’s knowing smile.

_Neku, I thought you couldn’t afford to lose._

“Tell me what you want,” Neku says. “Or you’re doing this on your own.”

Minamimoto scoffs. “I don’t need you.”

“Yeah, you do. Partners, remember? If I don’t fight, asshole, then _neither can you.”_

Silence. Minamimoto narrows his eyes. “…You’d be wide open for attack.”

“Sure.” Neku tilts his head. “But I got really good at running for my life, those three weeks in the Game. But what about you? Reapers, right?” He meets Minamimoto’s gaze and holds it. “Do you still remember what it’s like to live on the run?”

Minamimoto’s fingers curl and uncurl by his sides, restless fists. His expression is thunderous. Neku waits. “Talk,” he prompts, cold. “Otherwise, I’m out.”

His lip curls in a sneer, but in the end, Minamimoto looks away. There’s a pause. He hisses under his breath and then says, grudgingly, “You ever hear the Music?”

Neku blinks, a little thrown. _It worked?_ Holy shit. “What music?”

“The Music,” Minamimoto says, with scornful emphasis. “The city. Shibuya’s eternal code.”

Neku presses his lips. “…Yeah,” he admits. “Only after leaving the Game, though.” His mouth twists, and he looks away, missing it suddenly and fiercely. He wishes he were home. “It’s… it’s really something.”

Minamimoto snorts. “Is it?” Neku snaps his head up, glaring, but Minamimoto isn’t looking at him, eyes distant, staring hard down into the ruined alleyways. “A month, huh? Maybe it’s changed, then.” He smiles, cold and hard. “It was _wrong.”_

Neku considers him, silently. Slowly, his arms uncross. His stance loosens. He waits, and he listens.

“It used to make sense,” Minamimoto mutters, sounding bitter. “Perfect equations, clear solutions… clean, precise, perfect. Like prime numbers. It stood on its own.” He shakes his head. “But whoever was crunching in the equation—ugh! It was infuriating! Those off-hand notations! Those useless digits! It messed up the whole operation!” His hands clench to fists by his sides.

“So, you decided to take over,” Neku says, neutrally. Despite himself, he understands. The Music—Shibuya’s song—he can’t imagine listening, and hearing it get distorted. The clamoring notes, the harmony, the unceasing melody… he’s not sure he’d, like, jump to _murder_ , but… he’d want to fix it too, if he heard. If the melody started to break.

“One misplaced variable and the whole thing breaks down,” Minamimoto agrees. “QED. An equation that isn’t working has to be redone.”

“…Fine. Okay. I can get that.” Hell, it even fits. Hadn’t Shades—and even Joshua—said the same? The whole point of that nightmare three-week Game was to see if Shibuya could be saved. Shades had thought brainwashing was the solution; Joshua hadn’t seemed to think there would be a solution at all, though he must have changed his mind. And now Minamimoto— the final piece in the puzzle. New management, new rules, and new song.

And yet. “But Shibuya isn’t like that anymore. I mean, I don’t think so, anyway. And even if it was…” That melody. The sing-song harmony. “Everyone’s got their own world. Off-key notes are bound to happen. That’s just… that’s part of the song, too. It can’t always work out. People aren’t like that.” He smiles, a little. “Shibuya isn’t like that.”

“Hah!” Minamimoto says, looking amused and something like scornful. He reaches up again, as if to mess with his hat, and after a momentary pause rolls his eyes and settles his fingers in his hair instead, pushing back the stray strands. “Is that what you think? That’s no solution at all!”

Neku frowns, annoyed again. He leans back on his heels, shoving his hands back in his pockets. “Oh yeah? Then what’s _your_ idea of Shibuya?”

“Haven’t you been paying attention?” Minamimoto opens his arms, cackling. “A new equation! A working component! Factor out the unneeded variables and reach the ultimate value, the true balance between the numbers!”

Neku narrows his eyes at that, thinking it over. “That’s…” Minamimoto is grinning. “No.”

Minamimoto blinks. His fingers curl, smile turning hard with challenge. “Oh?”

Neku crosses his arms, feeling tired all over again. “That’s not— that’s not how people work. You’re the same as Shades.”

“Megs didn’t have even _half_ the vision—”

“Same concept, though, isn’t it?” Neku shakes his head. “People don’t—people don’t make sense, okay? Look, I get it. I used to think… walking those streets… it was all noise. It was all—messy and unplanned and chaotic and everyone had their world and I had mine and the moment those lines got crossed, it was just… so I get it.” He sighs. “But you’re wrong. I was wrong. Shibuya, other people… we can’t pretend to stay separate. We’re all a part of the same whole. We change ourselves and each other without meaning to. We knock into one another and make a mess, and find ourselves in the chaos.” Like CAT’s artwork murals. The symbols piled together, the noise condensed into a beautiful whole, a tapestry of art and music and math and fashion and dreams and—everything. Anything.

“Other people aren’t worthless,” Neku says. “Use whatever math term you want to insult me, but your attitude is just pissing me off. You aren’t the only one in the world, you know. Sorry, but it’s my home too.” He shrugs. “So, no. I don’t think it would have worked. Shibuya isn’t always going to make sense—to follow an equation or a plan.”

Minamimoto looks bored. “The typical nonsense of a radian.”

He should feel insulted, maybe? But all Neku can feel is tired. He turns away. “Whatever. I tried.” It figures, that for all the lessons Neku has learned, he’s not too good at teaching them. But that’s fine, too. Minamimoto’s worldview isn’t his problem— but Neku wonders, honestly, how long he’ll be able to keep that arrogant attitude, when the world as Neku knows it tends to run roughshod over the people who think they know everything.

He wonders, if the answer comes, if Minamimoto would even recognize it.

“You were right about Shibuya needing to change,” Neku says, finally, looking up at that churning gray sky. He can admit this much. But at the same time… Neku saw Shibuya change, little by little, those three weeks. Ai and Mina, making up; Sota and Nao, willing to lend a kind hand and kind ear for someone else’s sake; Ken Doi sticking to his principles; Makoto’s boss leaving Reaper Creeper and the honest advice he gave when he did. People didn’t change because someone new came in charge and told them what to do. Shibuya changed because its people talked to each other. Because they tried. And because someone else listened.

“But you wouldn’t have been able to change it.”

This time, Minamimoto doesn’t say anything.

Neku sighs. His headache has returned with a vengeance; it pounds behind his eyes like a heartbeat, like static crackling in his ears, the echo of another voice. He rubs at his temple, and turns to start walking. “…Never mind. Let’s just go.”

He gets five steps away before he realizes Minamimoto isn’t following. He turns back around. “Look—” Minamimoto has turned away, head tilted back, frowning as if in concentration. His fingers are tapping restless on his knee. “…What is it?”

Minamimoto waves a dismissive hand at him, looking distracted. “Zetta shut up for a sec. I need to…” He doesn’t finish the thought. His eyebrows knit. “Ugh, this place is messing with the parameters.”

Neku scowls at him, a little annoyed. That whole conversation, and what, he’s already dismissed it? Go figure. “What are you _talking_ about?”

But Minamimoto doesn’t seem to hear him. He has one hand up, eyes sharp, like he’s listening to something in the air. He turns his back to Neku and walks three paces, and then his head snaps to the side, eyes widening. For a moment, he seems almost stunned.

Then his expression lightens. His eyes gleam. The smile returns, stretching wide and wild across Minamimoto’s face, and Neku feels a shiver crawl down his spine, the static in his head suddenly reaching crescendo. Whispers and echoes and a warning, breaking through his mind like glass.

**_Behind you._ **

The city is cold and white and empty around them. And it is silent. But far away, if he strains his ears, Neku almost thinks he can hear a second set of footsteps.

Minamimoto fixes his eyes into the distance, and laughs low and soft. “What are the odds?” he says, and the tattoo markings of the Taboo crawl up his arm. “Right on time. This mission is already over.”

Neku catches his breath. His head is pounding. “Who—”

“Who do you think, radian?” Minamimoto turns and smiles. “It’s the Composer.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (announcer voice) in which Neku finally reaches his fucking limit, folks
> 
> I love Sho, I really do, but this was always going to happen. There’s no way Neku could have held out forever, especially since Sho is literally all take and no give in this partnership, and that just… does not work. Also he’s been insulting Neku nonstop since they started, so I figure it’s only fair if Neku finally gets to hit Sho back with some jabs of his own, you know?
> 
> I’m pretty sure Sho is a dang whiz at math, and probably also at word games, because it takes a really keen mind to make _math puns_ your preferred way of speaking. On the other hand, the fact he tried three times to assassinate Joshua despite losing _even when Joshua was at limited power_ is… yeah. 
> 
> Sho is good at the numbers game, but unfortunately, he tends to get used in other’s plots fairly often. First Hanekoma, then Megumi, now Coco… It’s actually a really interesting flaw?? Sho is so convinced he’s beyond the rules, so against working with others, that he constantly sees the situation as him using _them,_ or seeing the deal only from how it can benefit him, that he doesn’t seem to realize these people are using him in turn (often as a scapegoat, too), and also doesn’t consider the way these deals are, in the end, mostly in their favor. (Though in this current case, he’s definitely starting to get an idea of it…)
> 
> Next up: Shiki and Joshua! That’s right, it’s REUNION TIME!!! At long last…
> 
> [If you want to rec this fic, you can reblog it here!!](https://izaswritings.tumblr.com/post/626000197878743040/fic-masterpost-all-thats-left-in-the-world-a) Also, if you have any questions or just want to talk, [my tumblr](http://izaswritings.tumblr.com) is always open! 
> 
> I’m also on twitter as @izabellwit—come talk twewy with me!!
> 
> Any thoughts?


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